Mitch was able to get Shar away from the girl, though the girl, confused, wanted to hold Shar in her arms “until he makes sense again.” Mitch knelt on the bed with his hands on Shar’s back, as if trying to brace Shar’s anguish. For a few minutes, sweating profusely, Mitch could not decide what to do. He looked around—Marian stood, crying pitifully, betrayed, back against the wall; Ponzi stood in the doorway with his hat askew and the black feather curled up tight with his astonishment. His face had gone pale except for his nose.
“Max will know what to do with him,” Mitch said. Hearing Shar sob brought tears to his own eyes. He turned away and put his arms around Shar’s wet, heaving back, as if he wanted to shield Shar from the others.
16
Because of the excitement, Max had his supper late that evening, around eight o’clock. He had been in a conversation with one of his business partners when interrupted by a fierce knocking at his door. He opened it to see, with great surprise, the clownish figure of that man he had had fired several days before—a grotesque young man with filthy clothes and an imbecile stare, who had reminded Max, uncomfortably, of a whimsical projection of himself. Jerry had begged for permission to do something to him, first luring him into the laundry room of the motel, out of the sight and hearing of the guests—but Max had rebuked him angrily. “For you it’s a job—for us with responsibility it’s a life! A man’s life!” His defense of Ponzi irritated him, since it placed him on Ponzi’s side and seemed to establish a peculiar relationship between them. “I am growing weary of this life,” Max said. “There are few things that delight me. Shar—he is a delight. But what is happening to Shar?”
When they arrived at Shar’s room everything was quiet. Inside Shar sat on the edge of the bed, smoking. The room looked as if a ferocious wind had tunneled through it briefly and disappeared. Mitchie came out of the bathroom with a wet towel, which Shar accepted and held against his forehead. “What the hell are you doing here?” said Shar. “Is something wrong?”
Max sat down shakily beside Shar. His heart was pounding, his breathing came with difficulty. He met Shar’s cold stare with compassion. The flurry of his thoughts—his fears—was quieted by the admiration he felt for Shar’s inhuman control of himself. Max could smell Shar’s breath, and he could see the strain in his face. “You will never let me help you,” Max said, putting a hand on Shar’s arm. It was a curiously kind gesture.
“There’s nothing to help,” Shar said. He smoked his cigarette. “What the hell do you want, you runty bastard?” he said to Jerry. “Are you going to wave that pistol around here? Afraid to bring her along with you, weren’t you? Bastardly little coward! I knew you wouldn’t. You can’t do everything with a pistol.”
Jerry laughed shortly and went out into the hall.
“A man should never make enemies,” Max said. “No man is protected from his enemies.”
“What the hell do I want protection from?” Shar said. “What can hurt me? What can they do to me that I wouldn’t want done? Enemies!” He put the towel to his eyes and sucked a long, shuddering breath. “I don’t know what the hell you’re worried about. I’ll do the race for you. If you don’t want me you can put Mitch in. Mitch is good—I’d stake my life on him. He’s a good man. But I want to do the race. I can’t stand it until the race. This is the worst waiting time I’ve had—the time won’t move, it drags along, it’s killing me. I’m itching to get in there.”
“That’s very good to hear,” Max said happily.
“Vanilla Jones,” Shar said. He looked at Max. They smiled together. “I’ll run it straight this time. No accidents. I’d run it backwards if I could do it today—I’ve got a hell of a long time yet to wait.”
“Tomorrow you can take it easy. Don’t go out tomorrow and don’t drink. Let me take care of you. You are not imprisoned in a body like mine, you don’t feel the weight of your own guts pulling at your heart—you don’t understand that I need you. You will take care of yourself?”
Shar stared at him. There was a clumsy silence, as if Shar did not want to answer. “Yes,” he said finally.
Max leaned forward in his seriousness. “You will do it for me? You will live it for me? You won’t leave me?”
“I won’t leave you,” Shar said.
Max sighed and got to his feet. He wiped his pale forehead with a handkerchief. “Shar, I know the price you pay for your self-control, I am sensitive of your skill. I am sensitive of your being. I understand you. You can rely on me to understand you.” As if he had finished a prepared speech and was pleased with the response it got, his manner changed. He laughed, inviting Mitchie to join in with him. He said confidentially, “And here I was led to believe—I thought—A breakdown of some sort—But you have never broken down before a race, never; sometimes after a hard race, and in the winter—But never before. I have faith in you.”
Shar exhaled smoke slowly. He watched Max with a tight, perplexed smile. Except for his eyes, which were discolored by tiny threads of blood, his emotional breakdown of a short time before was adequately disguised and forgotten. “That’s surely right,” Mitchie said in an agreeable voice.
TO SHOW HIS CONCERN FOR Shar, Max introduced him to a girl who had Max’s approval. She was a tall, slender girl whose age was a mystery—she might have been anything between seventeen and twenty-seven. She had fine, clear, tanned skin, an elaborate, professional-looking beauty with detailed eyes shaded with silver and cheeks touched with pink, more becoming than a contrivance of natural health. The blended pink on her cheeks made her cheekbones prominent and gave her an artificial look that seemed to please her, since she glanced often in the mirror with a satisfied expression. Her hair was silver and glowed with cleanliness; she could not resist touching it occasionally and Shar, entranced by her beauty, wanted to touch it too. It lifted elaborately up away from her face, caught at the back of her head in a full twist that gave her a stately appearance. Walking about the room, she was mechanically self-conscious, a self-consciousness that had long ago lost concern for its object; Shar knew that she behaved like this when she was alone.
“Mr. Golyrod has talked often of you,” she said. Golyrod was Max’s partner in a number of businesses. “He is very pleased with you—he won quite a lot of money on some race of yours, just last week; I can’t remember where. I am very happy to meet you.”
She had a high, confident voice. She smiled at Shar. “I am very honored to meet you too and to be told that you are interested in me,” she said. She lowered her eyes; the silvery film on her eyelids sparkled. Shar, who was lying with his hands behind his head, watched her with a fascination that had nothing to do with his own feelings. “You are a handsome man,” she said. Her tone had no calculation or flattery in it; she spoke very politely. “My acquaintance with Mr. Golyrod and your friend began only a few months ago and so I have never seen you race—though I know people here at Cherry River who did see you last year. They are very interested in you.”
“Is there much money put across?”
“A great deal of money,” the girl said. She glanced in the mirror and touched her hair. “Mr. Golyrod is very interested in the race. He talks of it constantly.”
She wore a summer dress of black cotton that revealed most of her smooth, carefully tanned back, and silver jewelry, and very high heels that seemed to stick slightly in the rug now and then. Shar could smell her perfume. “Of course, I have never been acquainted with an auto racer before,” she said. If there was any snobbery here Shar could not detect it. “I have known quite a large number of people in various professions and trades, but I have never known anyone connected with racing. I hope you will excuse my ignorance.”
Her facial expression belied her concern: she looked perfectly content, modestly pleased by her own beauty. The light from the partially shaded window behind her caught her silver hair and illuminated it, so that it looked like a halo about her face. “Mr. Golyrod became very interested in a person with ash-colored hair. Do you know what
that is? A very light blond, almost with no color at all.” She spoke slowly and clearly, gazing at herself in the mirror. “When I appeared to him the next day with this color of hair he forgot about her. My hair before this was red, but a light red, not dark; a blond-red. I think it was too bright a color for me, because with my face I like to wear full hair, and red would make that too much—a distraction from me. I am very pleased with this.”
She turned her gaze from the mirror and looked at Shar. Her eyes were dark brown, black. She waited for Shar to say something and when he did not she was not discomforted, but went on easily as if she were reciting dialogue already prepared: “What do you think of this motel? Do you think it compares with Mr. Golyrod’s hotel in Jasper? Of course, this is much newer. We are very pleased with the response from the tourists—they seem to prefer the swimming pool to the ocean; I think they’re absolutely right. There are strange things down on the beach, dead fish, little white fish like fingers, and jellyfish too—though I’ve never seen any. And crabs of all kinds. In the surf little pebbles are picked up and thrown against you, and of course the water can’t be regulated, it can be very cold even when the sun is hot. I don’t go swimming very much, though I have to sun-bathe for my skin; I prefer to do that. Have you seen their swimming pool? And the courtyard in back? The pool is shaped like a four-leaf clover and has five sections to it; one of the sections, someone told me, is for the stem—the stem of the clover. The diving board is there. Your friend Max thought of a fountain in the middle, and of course lights are very common, beneath the water and above, for night swimming—it’s very beautiful. You haven’t seen it at night? This door opens out onto a little balcony and you can see the courtyard from there.” She indicated a door with shaded Venetian blinds, but did not offer to open it. “We are very pleased with it. The patio tables are always crowded, even in the morning. My hours are from eleven to one and there are always a great many people there, and many of the same ones. I recognize them from day to day. Of course, the most ingenious idea is the big glass dome so the whole courtyard can be air-conditioned. So far as we know no one else in the motel business has thought of this.”
Shar sighed. The girl and her quiet, assured voice seemed to be presenting themselves in a dream. “I may have forgotten, but I don’t think I have seen you out there,” she said. “I know you have only been in Cherry River for a few days. My hours are from eleven to one, that’s not a good time generally, but there is competition here and favoritism, of course, and since I’m new I can’t expect to be put on at night; though at night there is more to do for me in town, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to go out. But the lights in the evening are more becoming than during the day—I mean than the sunlight; and so the older girls are probably better suited for that time. It’s hard to hide anything from sunlight.”
Since she stood in a crisscross of sunlight from the window, she evidently meant Shar to comment on this. Shar, staring at her flawless skin, her perfect lips, felt nothing but a sense of depression. Deep in his mind, in his bowels, the familiar itching for violence began, knotted and secret. He and the girl looked at each other. “Impossible to hide anything from sunlight, any kind of imperfection,” she said. “I wear two-piece bathing suits down there and of course the light is very intense and I have trouble with my back sometimes—not right now, but sometimes, a horrible thing—and wear my hair down then, loose on my shoulders; though I can’t do it with this color of hair and will have to have it changed back again if that should happen. It’s nothing much—little outbreaks, pimples, and I have been told that no one can see them, but still—still—I would not want to cheat Mr. Golyrod.”
Shar lit a cigarette. “What do you do down there?” he said.
“We walk by the pool, sometimes lie by the pool, and sit at the tables,” the girl said.
“I heard that Golyrod was a bastard,” said Shar. “And what else do you do for him?”
“I am waiting for you to tell me,” she said.
Shar laughed, though he thought nothing was funny. The girl waited without giving the appearance of being patient, without even seeming aware of him, except that her gaze was directed toward him. In an instant—it electrified him—Shar felt that the girl was a parody of Karen, a sinister, bloodless mockery of her beauty. “Is something wrong?” the girl said. Shar shook his head. He smoked nervously, flicking ashes onto the thick white bedspread. “I’m afraid I have heard that some men in your profession are susceptible to narcotics,” she said. “I think Mr. Golyrod told me. I hope that has not happened to you and that it has not troubled you in any way.”
“A shot a week at the most,” said Shar. “Sometimes in the winter. It never bothered me.”
“You’re very fortunate,” she said. Shar thought she was about to continue—her expression darkened—but then she took a slow, careful breath and reassumed her polite half-smile. As if there were an understanding between them now, she came to Shar and sat beside him on the bed. “I am happy it has not troubled you in any way,” she said.
At this close range her face was no less perfect: her skin looked poreless, smooth, a fine light gold. Shar could see that her eyes were outlined in black and shadowed with silver that was inclined to look a little greasy; but this took nothing away from her elegance. He understood her meaning and felt oddly shocked at it, puritanically shocked, and resentful. But he was not sure he would be able to make love to her, and he could not entice himself into it. He could not translate her beauty into physical terms or into anything personal—he was not able to feel anything for her. What dull, throbbing unrest he felt was not for her but for someone else.
“Sleep with me,” said Shar. “For an hour or two. I want to sleep.”
She did not look puzzled. Her smile remained the same. “I understand,” she said. She began unbuttoning his shirt; her hands were slender, her nails long, oval, and painted silver. She wore a ring with a jade stone on her right hand. “As I said, you are the first auto racer I’ve ever met. But I am very pleased to meet you and very honored, and I hope that our acquaintance will last. You are an important man to us.”
When they were both undressed they lay in bed with a blanket over them, since the room was chilled by air conditioning. Shar put out his cigarette and turned his head away from the girl. As he fell asleep thoughts of Karen were loosed in his mind. He moaned softly—he could hear himself, as if from a distance—then he could hear only the forced silence of the air conditioner and the girl’s soft breathing. A gentle aura of perfume followed him into sleep.
WHEN SHAR WOKE, HIS HEAD was throbbing. The girl was coming out of the bathroom; she wore a white robe made of many layers of thin material. Her face was not so golden as before—she looked younger—and she walked stealthily, though she saw Shar watching her. Her hair, still drawn up about her head, was loosened and lay on her forehead and neck in tiny damp tendrils. “I’ll answer it,” she said. She went to the door and opened it slightly. Shar had not heard anyone knock. She talked briefly and closed the door again; she smiled at Shar. “Your friend and Mr. Golyrod would like us to join them downstairs in a while. I said to tell them we would be there. I hope I said the right thing?”
Shar’s eyes were sore from the short sleep he had had. He rubbed them viciously. “Sure,” he said. Upon waking, he was assaulted by the same uneasiness and dismay that had bothered him before. He felt as if he had slept no more than a few minutes, but in this time had been drained of his energy. His tone did not discomfort the girl, who spoke in a high, polite voice: “I have had the pleasure of meeting your friend Max”—here she hesitated a little, not liking to use the man’s first name, though she did not know his last name. “I met him several months ago but since then he has been away. He is a very pleasant man and is very fond of you. He spoke then of someone—one of his employees—and I have forgotten it now; but I suppose he meant you.”
“One of his employees!” Shar laughed.
He went into the bathroom and took
a shower. The bathroom was a marvel of white and pale, icy green: its cleanliness assaulted the eye. Shar could not see where the lighting came from; it seemed to glow out of the ceiling, hidden behind a metal strip of hard white lace. The cold water cleared his head and for the first time in days he had the sense of peering anxiously but sanely out of a dream—the sense of penetrating through the haze that surrounded him. But the vision lasted only a second and it had no object—he saw nothing. Then the uneasy fog resettled about him.
Shar heard the girl come into the bathroom and open the gigantic medicine cabinet door—it was a mirror that looked about nine feet square. She spoke in an even, interested voice, loud enough for him to hear: “I hope you feel rested. I think I heard from one of your friends that you were tired and anxious for the race; I can understand how that might be. I was in some theatrical productions”—she lingered over the syllables of these words —“in high school and found myself apprehensive about them.” The effortless calm of her voice seemed to belie any apprehension, any emotion, she might claim. “I was going to be in a play in college but the role was small—I was only a freshman—and something happened about that; I don’t exactly remember. You can use that white towel there if you want to.”
She went out. Shar turned off the shower. When he had dried himself—the towel was inches thick, a dazzling, hard white—he looked at the steamy cabinet mirror and saw that the girl had drawn two large exotic eyes on it, complete with thick lashes, so that she could look through them at herself.