"Answered Prayers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Капоте Трумен)

II KATE McCLOUD

During the week my sainted employer, Miss Victoria Self, sent me out on seven «dates» within three days, even though I pleaded everything from bronchitis to gonorrhea. And now she's trying to talk me into appearing in a porno film ("P. B. Listen, darling. It's a class production. With a script. I can get you two hundred a day"). But I don't want to go into all that, not just now.

Anyway, last night I felt too ripple-blooded, too restless to sleep; it was impossible, I just couldn't lie awake here in my so-divine Y. M. C. A. cell listening to the midnight farts and nightmare moanings of my Christian brethren.

So I decided to walk over to West 42nd Street, which isn't far from here, and search out a movie at one of those ammonia-scented all-night movie palaces. It was after one when I set out, and the route of my walk carried me along nine blocks of Eighth Avenue. Prostitutes, blacks, Puerto Ricans, a few whites, and indeed all strata of street-people society-the luxurious Latin pimps (one wearing a white mink hat and a diamond bracelet), the heroin-nodders nodding in doorways, the male hustlers, among the boldest of them gypsy boys and Puerto Ricans and runaway hillbilly rednecks no more than fourteen and fifteen years old ("Mister! Ten dollars! Take me home! Fuck me all night!")circled the sidewalks like buzzards above an abattoir. Then the occasional cruising cop car, its passengers uninterested, unseeing@ having seen it all until their eyes are rheumy with the sight.

I passed The Loading Zone, an S amp; M bar at 40th and Eighth, and there was a gang of laughing, howling, leather-jacketed, leather-helmeted jackals crowded on the sidewalk surrounding a young man, costumed exactly as they were, who, unconscious, was sprawled between the curb and the sidewalk, where all his friends, colleagues, tormentors, whatever the hell you care to call them, were urinating on him, drenching him from head to heel. Nobody noticed; well, noticed, but merely enough to slow their movement slightly; they kept walking-all except a bunch of indignant prostitutes, black, white, and at least half of them transvestites, who kept shouting at the urinators ("Stop that! Oh, stop that! You fairies. You dirty fairies!") and slapping them with their purses-until the leather-boys started hosing them down, laughing the louder, and the "girls," in their stretch pants and surrealist wigs (blueberry, strawberry, vanilla, Afro-gold) ran in flutterbutt flight down the street shrieking, but enjoyably so: "Fags. Fairies. Dirty mean fags."

They hesitated at the street corner to heckle a preacher, or an orator of sorts, who, like an exorcist demolishing demons, was assaulting a shifting, shiftless audience of sailors and hustlers, drug-pushers and beggars, and white-trash farm boys freshly arrived at the Port Authority bus terminal. "Yes! Yes!" screamed the preacher, the flickering lights of a hot-dog stand greening his young, taut, hungry, hysterical face. "The devil is wallowing inside you," he screamed, his Oklahoma voice thorny as barbed wire. "The devil squats there, fat, feeding on your evil. Let the light of the Lord starve him out. Let the light of the Lord lift you to heaven—"

"Oh yeah?" yelled one of the whores. "Ain't no Lord gonna lift nobody heavy as you. You too full of shit."

The preacher's mouth twisted with lunatic resentment. "Scumbags! Filth."

A voice answered him: "Shut up. Don't call them names."

"What?" said the preacher, screaming again.

"I'm no better than they are. And you are no better than I am. We're all the same person." And suddenly I realized the voice was mine, and I thought boyoboy, Jesus, kid, you're losing your marbles, your brains are running out of your ears.

So I hurried right into the first theatre I came to, not bothering to notice what films were on display. In the lobby I bought a chocolate bar and a bag of buttered popcorn-I hadn't eaten since breakfast. Then I found a seat in the balcony, which was an error, for it is in the balconies of these round-the-clock emporiums that the shadows of tireless sex-searchers weave and wander among the rows-wrecked whores, women in their sixties and seventies who want to blow you for a dollar ("Fifty cents?"), and men who offer the same service for nothing, and other men, sometimes rather conservative executive types, who seem to specialize in accosting the numerous slumbering drunks.

Then, there on the screen I saw Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. An American Tragedy, a film I'd seen at least twice, not that it was all that great, but still it was very good, especially the final scene, which was unreeling at this particular moment: Clift and Taylor standing together, separated by the bars of a prison cell, a death cell, for Clift is only hours away from execution. Clift, already a poetic ghost inside his grey death-clothes, and Taylor, nineteen and ravishing, sublimely fresh as lilac after rain. Sad. Sad. Enough to jerk the tears out of Caligula's eyes. I choked on a mouthful of popcorn.

The picture ended, and was immediately replaced by Red River, a cowboy love story starring John Wayne and, once again, Montgomery Clift. It was Clift's first important film role, the one that made him a "star" — as I had good reason to recall.

Remember Turner Boatwright, the late, not too lamented magazine editor, my old mentor (and nemesis), the dear fellow who got beaten by a dope-crazed Latino until his heart stopped and his eyes popped out of his head?

One morning, while I was still in his good graces, he telephoned and invited me to dinner: "Just a little party. Six altogether. I'm giving it for Monty Clift. Have you seen his new picture—Red River?" he asked, and went on to explain that he'd known Clift a long time, ever since he was a very young actor, a protégé of the Lunts. "So," said Boaty, "I asked him if there was any particular person he wanted me to invite and he said yes, Dorothy Parker-he'd always wanted to meet Dorothy Parker. And I thought oh my God-because Dottie's become such a lush, you never know when her face is going to land in the soup. But I rang up Dottie and she said oh she'd be thrilled to come. S thought Monty was the most beautiful young man she'd ever seen. 'But I can't,' she said, 'because I've already promised to have dinner with Tallulah that evening. And you know how she is: she'd ride me on a rail if I begged off.' So I said listen, Dottie, let me handle this: I'll call Tallulah and invite her, too. And that's what happened. Tallulah said she'd love to come, d-d-darling, except for one thing-she'd already invited Estelle Winwood, and could she bring Estelle?"

It was a heady notion, the thought of these three formidable ladies all in one room: Bankhead, Dorothy Parker, and Estelle Winwood. Boaty's invitation was for seven-thirty, allowing an hour for cocktails before dinner, which he had prepared himself—Senegalese soup, a casserole, salad, assorted cheeses, and a lemon soufflé. I arrived somewhat early to see if I could be of any help, but Boaty, wearing an olive velvet jacket, was calm, everything was in order, there was nothing left to do except light the candles.

The host poured each of us one of his «special» martinis-gin of zero temperature to which a drop of Pernod had been added. "No vermouth. just a touch of Pernod. An old trick I learned from Virgil Thompson."

Seven-thirty became eight; by the time we had our second drink the other guests were more than an hour late, and Boaty's sleekly knitted composure began to unravel; he started nibbling at his fingernails, a most uncharacteristic indulgence. At nine he exploded: "My God, do you realize what I've done? I don't know about Estelle, but the other three are all drunks. I've invited three alcoholics to dinner! One is bad enough. But three. They'll never show up."

The doorbell rang.

"D-d-darling…" It was Miss Bankhead, gyrating inside a mink coat the color of her long, loosely waved hair. "I'm so sorry. It was all the taxi-driver's fault. He took us to the wrong address. Some wretched apartment house on the West Side."

Miss Parker said: "Benjamin Katz. That was his name. The taxi-driver."

"You're wrong, Dottie," Miss Winwood corrected her as the ladies discarded their coats and were escorted by Boaty into his dark Victorian parlor, where logs were cheerfully crunching inside a marble fireplace. "His name was Kevin O'Leary. Badly suffering from the Irish virus. That's why he didn't know where he was going."

"Irish virus?" said Miss Bankhead.

"Booze, dear," said Miss Winwood.

"Ah, booze," sighed Miss Parker. "That's exactly what I need," though a slight sway in her walk suggested that another drink was exactly what she didn't need. Miss Bankhead ordered: "A bourbon and branch. And don't be stingy." Miss Parker, complaining of a certain crise de foie, at first declined, then said: "Well, perhaps a glass of wine."

Miss Bankhead, spying me where I stood by the fireplace, swooped forward; she was a small woman, but, because of her growling voice and unconquerable vitality, seemed Amazonian. "And," she said, blink-blinking her near-sighted eyes, "is this Mr. Clift, our great new star?"

I told her no, that my name was P. B. Jones. "I'm nobody. Just a friend of Mr. Boatwright's."

"Not one of his 'nephews'?"

"No. I'm a writer, or want to be."

"Boaty has so many nephews. I wonder where he finds them all. Damn it, Boaty, where's my bourbon?"

As the guests settled among Boaty's horsehair settees, I decided that of the three, Estelle Winwood, an actress then in her early sixties, was the most striking. Parker—she looked like the sort of woman to whom one would instantly relinquish a subway seat, a vulnerable, deceptively incapable child who had gone to sleep and awakened forty years later with puffy eyes, false teeth, and whiskey on her breath. And Bankhead-her head was too large for her body, her feet too small; and anyway, her presence was too strong for a room to contain: it needed an auditorium. But Miss Winwood was an exotic creature-snake-slim, erect as a headmistress, she wore a huge broad-brimmed black straw hat which she never removed the entire evening; that hat's brim shadowed the pearl-pallor of her haughty face, and concealed, though not too successfully, the mischief faintly firing her lavender eyes. She was smoking a cigarette, and it developed that she was a chain-smoker, as was Miss Bankhead; Miss Parker, too.

Miss Bankhead lit one cigarette from another, and announced: "I had a strange dream last night. I dreamt I was at the Savoy in London. Dancing with Jock Whitney. Now there was an attractive man. Those big red ears, those dimples."

Miss Parker said: "Well? And what was so strange about that?"

"Nothing. Except that I haven't thought about Jock in twenty years. And then this very afternoon I saw him. He was crossing 57th Street in one direction, and I was going in the other. He hadn't changed much-a little heavier, a bit jowly. God, the great times we had together. He used to take me to the ball games; and the races. But it was never any good in bed. The same old story. I once went to an analyst and wasted fifty dollars an hour trying to figure out why I can never make it work with any man I really love, am really mad about. While some stagehand, somebody I don't give a damn about, can leave me limp."

Boaty appeared with the drinks; Miss Parker emptied her glass with one swift swallow, then said: "Why don't you just bring the bottle and leave it on the table?"

Boaty said: "I can't understand what's happened to Monty. At least he could have called."

"Meeow! Meeow." The cat-wail was accompanied by the sound of fingernails scratching against the front door. "Meeow!"

Pardonnez-moi, señor, " said young Mr. Clift, as he fell into the room and supported himself by hugging Boaty. "I've been sleeping off a hangover." Offhand, I would have said he hadn't slept it off sufficiently. When Boaty offered him a martini, I noticed that his hands trembled as he struggled to hold it.

Underneath a rumpled raincoat, he wore grey flannel slacks and a grey turtle-neck sweater; he was also wearing argyle socks and a pair of loafers. He kicked off the shoes and squatted at Miss Parker's feet.

"The story of yours I like, I like the one about the woman who keeps waiting for the telephone to ring. Waiting for a guy who's trying to give her the brush. And she keeps making up reasons why he doesn't call, and pleading with herself not to call him. I know all about that. I've lived through it. And that other story—"Big Blonde" — where the woman swallows all those pills, only she doesn't die, she wakes up and has to go on living. Wow, I'd hate to have that happen. Did you ever know anyone that happened to?"

Miss Bankhead laughed. "Of course she does. Dottie's always gulping pills or cutting her wrists. I remember going to see her in the hospital once, she had her wrists bandaged with pink ribbon with cute little pink ribbon bows. Bob Benchley said: 'If she doesn't stop doing that, Dottie's going to hurt herself one of these days.'»

Miss Parker complained: "Benchley didn't say that. I did. I said: 'If I don't stop doing this, someday I'm going to hurt myself.'»

For the next hour Boaty waddled between the kitchen and the parlor, fetching drinks and more drinks, and grieving over his dinner, particularly the casserole, which was drying out. It was after ten before he persuaded the others to arrange themselves around the dining-room table, and I helped by pouring the wine, the only nourishment that seemed to interest anyone, anyway: Clift dropped a cigarette into his untouched bowl of Senegalese SOUP, and stared inertly into space, as if he were enacting a shell-shocked soldier. His companions pretended not to notice, and Miss Bankhead continued a meandering anecdote ("It was when I had a house in the country, and Estelle was staying with me, and we were stretched out on the lawn listening to the radio. It was a portable radio, one of the first ever made. Suddenly a newscaster broke in; he said to stand by for an important announcement. It turned out to be about the Lindbergh kidnapping. How someone had used a ladder to climb into a bedroom and steal the baby.

When it was over, Estelle yawned and said: 'Well, we're well out of that one, Tallulah!"'). While she talked, Miss Parker did something so curious it attracted everyone's attention; it even silenced Miss Bankhead. With tears in her eyes, Miss Parker was touching Clift's hypnotized face, her stubby fingers tenderly brushing his brow, his cheekbones, his lips, chin.

Miss Bankhead said: "Damn it, Dottie. Who do you think you are? Helen Keller?"

"He's so beautiful," murmured Miss Parker. "Sensitive. So finely made. The most beautiful young man I've ever seen. What a pity he's a cocksucker." Then, sweetly, wide-eyed with little girl naiveté, she said: "Oh. Oh dear. Have I said something wrong? I mean, he is a cocksucker, isn't he, Tallulah?"

Miss Bankhead said: "Well, d-d-darling, I r-r-really wouldn't know. He's never sucked my cock."

I couldn't keep my eyes open; it was very boring, Red River, and the odor of latrine disinfectant was chloroforming me. I needed a drink, and I found one in an Irish bar at 38th Street and Eighth Avenue. It was almost closing time, but a jukebox was still going and a sailor was dancing to it all by himself. I ordered a triple gin. As I opened my wallet, a card fell out of it. A white business card containing a man's name, address, and telephone number: Roger W. Appleton Farms, Box 711, Lancaster, Pa. Tel: 905-537-1070.1 stared at the card, wondering how it had come into in my possession. Appleton? A long swallow of gin brightened my memory. Appleton. Of course. We had a Self Service client, one of the few I could recall pleasantly. We had spent an hour together in his room at the Yale Club; an older man, but weathered, strong, well-built, and with a handshake that was a real bone-cruncher. A nice guy, very open—he had told me a lot about himself: after his first wife died, he had married a much younger woman, and they lived on the lands of a rolling farm filled with fruit trees and roaming cows and narrow tumbling creeks. He had given me his card and told me to call him up and come for a visit any time. Embraced by self-pity, emboldened by alcohol, and totally forgetful of the fact that it must be three in the morning, I asked the bartender to give me five dollars' worth of quarters.

"Sorry, sonny. But we're shutting down."

"Please. This is an emergency. I've got to make a long-distance call."

Counting out the money, he said: "Whoever she is, she ain't worth it."

After I had dialed the number, an operator requested an additional four dollars. The phone rang half a dozen times before a woman's voice, deep and slow with sleep, responded.

"Hello. Is Mr. Appleton there?"

She hesitated. "Yes. But he's asleep. But if it's something important…"

"No. It's nothing important."

"May I ask who's callin?"

"Just tell him… just say a friend called. His friend from across the River Styx."

But to return to that winter afternoon in Paris when I first met Kate McCloud. There we were, the three of us—myself, my young mongrel dog, Mutt, and Aces Nelson, all clumped together inside one of those little silk-lined Ritz elevators.

We rode to the top floor, disembarked there, and as we walked along the corridor lined with old-fashioned steamer trunks, Aces said: "Of course, she doesn't know the real reason why I'm bringing you here…"

"If it comes to that, neither do I!"

"All I said was that I'd found this wonderful masseur. You see, for the last year she's been suffering from a back ailment. She's gone from doctor to doctor, here and in America. Some say it's a slipped disc, or a spinal fusion, but most agree it's psychosomatic, a maladie imaginaire. But the problem is…" His voice hovered.

"Is?"

"But I told you. Just now. While we were having drinks in the bar."

Segments of our conversation replayed inside my head. At present, Kate McCloud was the estranged wife of Axel Jaeger, a German industrialist and allegedly one of the world's richest men. Earlier, when she was sixteen, she had been married to the son of a rich Virginia horse breeder for whom her Irish father had worked as a trainer. That marriage had ended on very well-founded grounds of mental cruelty. Subsequently she had moved to Paris, and over the years, became a goddess of the fashion press; Kate McCloud on a bearhunt in Alaska, on a safari in Africa, at a Rothschild ball, at the Grand Prix with Princess Grace, on a yacht with Stavros Niarchos.

"The problem is…" Aces fumbled. "It's as I told you, she is in danger. And she needs… well, someone to be with her. A bodyguard."

"Hell, why don't we just sell her Mutt?"

"Please," he said. "This isn't humorous."

Those were the truest words old Aces had ever spoken. If only I could have foreseen the labyrinth he was leading me into when a black woman opened the door. She wore a smart black pants suit with numerous gold chains twisted around her neck and wrists. Her mouth was loaded with gold, too; her denture looked less like teeth than an investment. She had curly white hair and a round, unlined face. Asked to guess her age, I would have said forty-five, forty-six; later, I learned she was a child-bride.

"Corinne!" exclaimed Aces, and kissed the woman on both cheeks. "Comment ça va?"

"Never felt better, and never had less."

"P. B., this is Corinne Bennett, Mrs. McCloud's factotum. And, Corinne, this is Mr. Jones, the masseur.'

Corinne nodded, but her eyes concentrated on the dog tucked under in arm. "What I want to know is who is that dog? No present for Miss Kate, I hope. She's been muttering about getting another dog ever since Phoebe—"

"Pboebe?"

"Had to put her down. Same as they will me someday soon. But don't mention it to her. It'll just set her off again. Have mercy, I never saw a grown person cry that bad. Come along, she's waiting for you." Then, lowering her voice, she added: "That Mme. Apfeldorf is with her."

Aces grimaced; he looked at me as if about to speak, but there was no need; I'd leafed through enough Vogue's and ParisMatch's to know who Perla Apfeldorf was. The wife of a very racist South African platinum tycoon, she was as much a figure of the worldly milieu as Kate McCloud. She was Brazilian, and privately-though this was something I discovered later-her friends called her the Black Duchess, suggesting she was not of the pure Portuguese descent she claimed, but a child of Rio's favelos, born with quite a bit of the tarbrush which, if true, was rather a joke on the Hitlerian Herr Apfeldorf.

The apartment snuggled under the eaves of the hotel; the rooms, all dominated by large round dormer windows overlooking the Place Vendôme, were identical in size; originally they had been used as individual servant's rooms, but Kate McCloud had strung six of them together and decorated each for a particular purpose. The effect, overall, was like a railroad flat in a luxurious tenement.

"Miss Kate? The gentlemen are here."

And, magically, there we were inside Kate McCloud's bedroom. "Aces. Angel." She was perched on the side of a bed brushing her hair. "Will you have some tea? Perla's having some. Or a liqueur? No? Then I shall. Corinne, would you bring me a drop of Verveine? Aces, aren't you going to introduce me to Mr. Jones? Mr. Jones," she confided to Mme. Apfeldorf, who was seated in a chair beside the bed, "is going to drive the demons out of my spine."

"Well," said Mme. Apfeldorf, who had slicked-black hair shiny as a crow's and a voice with a crowlike croak, "I hope he's better than that sadistic little Japanese Mona sent my way. I'll never trust Mona again. Not that I ever did. You wouldn't believe what happened! He made me lie naked on the floor and then, in his bare feet, he stood on my neck, walked up and down my back, positively danced. The agony "

"Oh, Perla," said Kate McCloud pityingly. "What do you know about agony? I've just spent a week at St. Moritz and never saw a pair of skis. Never left my room except to visit Heinie. just lay there munching Doridens and praying. Aces," she said, handing him a silver frame that had been standing on a table near her bed, "here's a new picture of Heinie. Isn't he lovely?"

"This is Mrs. McCloud's son," Aces explained, showing me the picture in the frame: a chubby-cheeked solemn child muffled in mufflers and a fur coat and fur hat and holding a snowball. And then I noticed that placed around the room, there were really dozens of pictures of this same boy at varying ages.

"Lovely. How old is he now?"

"Five. Well, he'll be five in April." She resumed brushing her hair, but harshly, destructively. "It was a nightmare. I was never allowed once to see him alone. Dear Uncle Frederick and beloved Uncle Otto. The two old maids. They were always there. Watching. Counting the kisses and ready to show me the door the moment my hour was up." She threw the brush across the room, which made Mutt bark. "My own baby."

The Black Duchess cleared her throat; it sounded like a crow gargling. She said: "Kidnap him."

Kate McCloud laughed and collapsed against a heap of Porthault pillows. "Odd, though. You're the second person who's said that to me within the past week." She lit a cigarette. "It isn't quite true that I never went out in St. Moritz. I did. Twice. Once to dinner for the Shah, and another night some crazy fling Mingo had at the King's Club. And I met this extraordinary woman—"

Mme. Apfeldorf said: "Was Dolores there?"

"Where?"

"At the Shah's party."

"There were so many people, I can't remember. Why?"

"Nothing. Just rumors. Who gave it?"

Kate McCloud shrugged. "One of the Greeks. The Livanos, I think. And after dinner His Highness pulled his old stunt: kept everybody sitting at their table for hours while he told tasteless jokes. In French. English. German. Persian. Everybody howling with laughter, even if they hadn't understood a word. It's painful to watch Farah Diba; she really blushes—"

"Sounds as though he hasn't changed much since we were at school together in Gstaad. Le Rosey."

"And I had Niarchos sitting next to me, which was no help. He had enough Cognac in him to pickle a rhinoceros. He started at me, very belligerently, and said: 'Look me in the eye.' Well, I couldn't-his eyes were unfocused. 'Look me in the eye and tell me what makes you happiest in the world?' I told him sleep. He said: 'Sleep. That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. You'll have thousands of years to sleep. Now I'll tell you what makes me happiest. To hunt. To kill. Prowl through the jungles and kill a tiger, an elephant, a lion. Then I am a peaceful man. Happy. What do you say to that?' And I said: "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. To kill and destroy, that seems to me a very pathetic thing to call happiness.'"

The Black Duchess inclined her head, agreeing: "Yes, the Greeks are dark-minded. The rich Greeks. They bear the same resemblance to humans as coyotes do to dogs. Coyotes look like dogs; but of course they aren't dogs—"

Aces intervened to comment: "But, Kate, you like to hunt. How do you account for that?"

"I like to play at hunting. I like the walking and the wilderness. The only thing I ever shot was a Kodiak bear, and that was in self-defense."

"You shot a man," Aces reminded her.

"Only in the legs. And he deserved it. He killed a white leopard." Corinne appeared with a small glass of Verviene, and Aces was right—the liqueur matched perfectly the ultra-green of her eyes. "But what I started to tell you about was this amazing woman I met at Mingo's fandango. She sat down next to me, and said: 'Hello, honey. I hear you're a Southern girl, and so am I. I'm from Alabama. I'm Virginia Hill."

Aces said: "The Virginia Hill?"

"Well, I didn't realize she was all that famous until Mingo told me. I'd never heard of her."

"Nor I," said Mme. Apfeldorf. "Who is she? An actress?"

"A gangster's moll," Aces informed her. "The Most Wanted woman. The F. B. I. have pictures of her posted in every post office in America. I read an article about her, it was called 'The Madonna of the Underworld. ' Everybody's after her, not only the F. B. I. but most of her old gangster chums, too: they figure if the F. B. I. ever catch her, she might talk and talk too much. When things got too tough, she fled to Mexico and married an Austrian ski instructor; she's been holed up in Austria and Switzerland ever since. The Americans have never been able to extradite her."

"Mon Dieu, " said Mme. Apfeldorf, making a sign of the cross. "She must be a very frightened woman."

"Not frightened. Despairing, even suicidal perhaps; but she wears a jovial mask very convincingly. She kept putting her arm around me, squeezing me and saying: 'It sure is good to talk to somebody from down home. Hell, you can take the whole of Europe and cram it up your shithole. See my hand?' She showed me her hand; it was wrapped in plaster and gauze, and she said: 'I caught my husband in bed with one of these ladeda bimbos, and I broke her jaw. I would've broken his, too. If he hadn't jumped out the window. I guess you know all about my troubles stateside; but sometimes I feel I'd be better off to go home and get it over with. I can't be more in a jail there than I am here.'»

Aces said: "But what was she really like? Is she beautiful?"

Kate considered. "Never beautiful, but pretty, cute, like a cute little carhop. She has a nice face, but two chins to go with it. And I can't imagine what her tits weigh—at least a couple of kilos."

"Please, Kate," complained the Black Duchess. "You know how I dislike those words. Tits."

"Oh, yes. I always forget. You were educated by Brazilian nuns. Anyway, what I started to say was, suddenly this woman pressed her lips against my ear and whispered: 'Why don't you kidnap him?' I simply looked at her; I had no idea what she was talking about. She said: 'You know all about me but I know quite a lot about you. How you married that Kraut bastard and how he kicked you out and kept the kid. Listen, I'm a mother, too. I have a boy. And I know how you feel. With his money, and these European laws, the only way you're going to get that kid back is by kidnapping him."'

Mutt whined; Aces jingled some coins in his pocket; Mme. Apfeldorf said: "I think she's quite correct. And it could be done."

"Yes, it could," said Aces. "A damned dangerous business. But it could be done."

"How?" Kate McCloud shouted, pounding her fists into the pillows. "You know that house. It's a fortress. I could never get him out of there. Not with old-maid uncles always watching. And the servants."

Aces said: "Still, that part of it might be accomplished. With exemplary planning."

"And then what? Once the alarm was sounded, I'd never get within ten miles of the Swiss frontier."

"But suppose," croaked Mme. Apfeldorf, "suppose you didn't try to cross the frontier. By car, I mean. Suppose you had a private Grumman jet waiting for you in the valley. All aboard, and off we go."

"To where?"

"To America!"

Aces was excited: "Yes! Yes! Once you were in the States, Herr Jaeger would be helpless. You could file for divorce, and there's no judge in America who wouldn't give you custody of Heinie."

"Daydreams. Pipedreams. Mr. Jones," she said, "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long. The massage table is in the closet over there."

"Pipedreams. Perhaps. But I'd think about it," said the Black Duchess, rising. "let's have lunch next week."

Aces kissed Kate McCloud on the cheek. "I'll call you later, darling. Take good care of my girl, P. B. And when you're finished, look me up in the bar."

While I was setting up the massage table, Mutt jumped on the bed and squatted to peepee. I started to grab her. "No harm. Many worse things have happened in this bed. She's so ugly she's adorable. I love her black face with those big white circles around her eyes. Like a Panda. How old is he?"

"Three, maybe four months. Mr. Nelson gave her to me."

"I wish he'd given her to me. What's her name?"

"Mutt."

"You can't call her that. She's far too charming. Let's think of something more suitable."

When I had the massage table arranged, she rolled off the bed and dropped a gauzy short negligee, underneath which she was nude. Her pubic hair and her shoulder-length honey-red hair were an exact color match; she was an authentic redhead, all right. She was thin, but her body needed not an extra ounce; because of the perfection of her posture, she seemed taller than she was—about my height: five feet eight inches. Casually, her perky breasts scarcely quivering, she crossed the room and touched the button of a stereo phonograph: Spanish music, Segovia's guitar, relieved the silence. Silently, she approached the massage table and reclined there, letting her fascinating hair fall over its endedge. Sighing, she curtained her brilliant eyes; closed them as though she were posing for a death mask. She wore no makeup, and required none, for her high cheekbones had a warm natural coloring and her pleasingly pouted lips a pinkness of their own.

I felt a stirring in my crotch, a stirring that stiffened as I gazed along the length of her healthy, sculptured body, her succulent nipples, the ample curve of her hips, and her supine legs extending toward slender feet flawed only by skier's bunions on both her little toes. My hands were unsteady, damp, and I cursed myself: Cut it out, P. B. — this isn't very professional of you, old boy. All the same, my prick kept pressing against my fly. Now, nothing like this had so spontaneously happened to me before, though I'd massaged, and more than massaged, a fair share of arousing women-though none, admittedly, to compare with this Galatea. I wiped my wet hands against my trousers, and began to manipulate her neck and the upper regions of her shoulders, kneading the taut skin and tendons as though I were a merchant fingering costly fabric. At first she was tense, but gradually I induced suppleness, an easing.

"Hmm," she murmured, like a drowsy child. "That's nice. Tell me, how did you fall into the hands of our naughty Mr. Nelson?"

I was glad to talk; anything to get my mind off that mischievous hard-on. So not only did I tell her how I'd met Aces at a bar in Tangier, I continued with a brief resume of P. B. Jones and his journeys. A bastard, born in St. Louis and raised there in a Catholic orphanage until I was fifteen and ran away to Miami, where I'd worked as a masseur five or so years-until I'd saved enough money to go to New York and try my luck at what I really wanted to be, a writer. Successfully? Well, yes and no: I'd published a book of short stories-ignored, unfortunately, by both the critics and public, a disappointment that had brought me to Europe, and long years of traveling, scrounging about while I attempted to write a novel; but that, too, had been a dud. So here I was, still drifting and with no future that extended beyond tomorrow.

By now I'd reached her abdomen, massaged it with a rolling circular motion, then descended to her hips, and then, with my eyes on her rosy pubic hairs, I thought of Alice Lee Langman, and Alice Lee Langman's memories of a Polish lover who had enjoyed, jamming her cunt with cherries and eating them out one by one. My imagination enhanced that fantasy. I imagined soft pitted cherries marinating in a bowl of warm rich sweetened cream, and I saw Kate McCloud's savory fingers selecting creamy cherries from the bowl and inserting them—My legs trembled, my cock pulsed, my balls were tight as a miser's fist. I said: "Excuse me," and walked into the bathroom, followed by Mutt, who watched with puzzled, pixie interest as I unzipped my fly and jacked off. It didn't take much: a couple of tugs and I launched a load that damn near flooded the floor. After removing the evidence with Kleenex, I washed my face, dried my hands, and returned to my client, my legs weak as a seasick sailor's but my cock still semi-saluting.

The dormer window was smudged with wintry Parisian dusk; lamplight defined her figure, silhouetted her face. She was smiling, and she said, a flickering amusement tempering her tone: "Feeling better?"

A bit gruffly, I said: "If you could turn over now…!"

I massaged the nape of her neck, rippled my fingers along her spine, and her torso vibrated, like a purring cat. "You know," she said, "I've thought of a name for your dog. Phoebe. I once had a pony named Phoebe. And a dog, too. But maybe we ought to ask Mutt. Mutt, how would you like to be called Phoebe?"

Mutt squatted to sprinkle the carpet.

"You see, she loves it! Mr. Jones," she said, "could I ask a great favor? Would you let Phoebe spend the night with me? I hate sleeping alone. And I've missed my other Phoebe so much."

"It's all right with me, if it's all right with… with Phoebe."

"Thank you" she said simply.

But it wasn't all right. I felt if I left Mutt here with this sorceress, she would never belong to me again. Or, perhaps, I'd never again belong to myself. It was as if I'd slipped into furious white water, an icy boiling current carrying me, slamming me toward some picturesque but dastardly cascade. Meanwhile my hands worked to soothe her back, buttocks, legs; her breathing became rhythmic and even. When I was sure she was asleep, I bent and kissed her ankle.

She moved, but did not waken. I sat down on the edge of the bed, and Phoebe—yes, Phoebe—jumped up and curled beside me; soon she was asleep herself. I had been loved, but I had never known love before, and so I could not comprehend the impulses, the desires careening around my brain like a bobsled. What could I do, what could I give Kate McCloud that would force her to respect and return my love? My eyes toured the room and settled on the fireplace mantel and the tables supporting the silver-framed picture of her child: such a serious little boy, though sometimes he was smiling, or lapping an ice-cream cone, or poking out his tongue and making comic faces. "Kidnap him" — wasn't that what the Black Duchess had advised? Absurd, but I saw myself, sword unsheathed, castrating dragons and fighting through infernos to rescue this child and bring him safely to his mother's arms. Pipedreams. Bullshit. And yet, instinct somehow told me the boy was the answer. Surreptitiously, I tiptoed out of the room and closed the door, disturbing neither Phoebe's slumbers nor those of her new mistress.

Time out. I need to sharpen pencils and begin a new notebook.

That was a long time out; almost a week. But it is November now, suddenly, unreasonably cold; I went out in a hard driving rain and caught a dandy. I wouldn't have gone out if my employer, Miss Victoria Self, the High Priestess of the Dial-A-Dick, Call-A-Cunt services, hadn't sent an urgent message ordering me to her office.

It beats me why, when you think of the money that woman must be coining, she and her Mafioso confederates, they can't fork out for slightly less sleazy headquarters than the two-room dump above a 42nd Street porno shop. Of course, the customers seldom see the premises; they only make contact by telephone. So I guess she figures why waste money pampering the help, us poor whores. Drowned, the rain water all but gushing out of my ears, I sloshed up the two flights of creaking stairs and once more confronted the frosted-glass door with chipped lettering: The Self Service. Walk In.

Four people occupied the stuffy little waiting room. Sal, a short hunky Italian wearing a wedding ring; he was one of Miss Self s moonlighting cops. And Andy, who was on probation for a burglary charge; but, if you didn't look too closely, he might pass for an average college-kid type; as usual, he was playing a harmonica. And then there was Butch, Miss Self's blond, languid secretary, who, now that the last of his Fire Island suntan had deserted him, resembled Uriah Heep more than ever. Maggie was there, too—a plump sweet girl: the last time I'd seen her she had just got married, greatly to Butch's indignation.

"And now guess what she's done!" Butch hissed as I walked in. "She's pregnant."

Maggie pleaded: "Please, Butch. I don't see why you're making such a hullabaloo. I only found out yesterday. It won't interfere."

"That's what you said when you sneaked off and married this bum. Maggie, you know I love you. But how could you have let such a thing happen?"

"Please, honey. I promise. It won't happen again."

Not mollified, but somewhat, Butch rustled papers on his desk and turned to Sal.

"Sal, I hope you're not forgetting you have a five o'clock appointment at the St. George hotel. Room 907. His name is Watson."

"The St. George! Jeez," grumbled Sal, whose nickname is Ten Penny because of his ability, when his dick is fully erect, to line ten pennies along its thick length, "that's in Brooklyn. I got to haul-ass way the hell over to Brooklyn in this weather?"

"It's a fifty-dollar date."

"I hope it's nothing fancy. I'm not up to anything fancy."

"Nothing fancy. Just a simple Golden Shower. The gentleman's thirsty."

"Well," said Sal, stepping over to a water cooler in the corner and grabbing himself a Dixie cup, "I guess I'd better tank up."

"Andy!"

"Yessir."

"Put that miserable harmonica in your pocket and leave it there."

"Yessir."

"Is that all you delinquents do in jail? Get yourselves tattooed and learn to play the harmonica."

"I ain't got any tattoo—"

"Don't talk back to me!"

"Yessir," said Andy humbly.

Butch swerved his attention my way; in his expression there was an extra-added smugness hinting that he might be privy to some ominous information concerning me. He pressed a buzzer on his desk, and said: "I believe Miss Self is ready to see you now."

Miss Self seemed oblivious to my entrance; she was stationed at a window, her back to me, pondering the downpour. Thin grey braids were looped around her narrow skull; as always, her stoutish figure bulged inside a blue serge suit. She was smoking a cigarillo. Her head swiveled. "Ah, so," she said with the leftover remnants of a German accent, "you are very wet. That is not good. Have you no raincoat?"

"I was hoping Santa Claus would bring me one for Christmas."

"That is not good," she repeated, advancing toward her desk. "You have been making good money. For sure you can afford a raincoat. Here," she said, producing from a drawer two glasses and a bottle of her preferred tranquilizer, tequila. While she poured, I wondered anew at the severity of the setting, starker than a penitent's cell, utterly unadorned except for the desk, some straight-back chairs, a Coca-Cola calendar, and a wall of filing cabinets (how I would have liked to have got a look inside those!). The only frivolous object in view was the gold Cartier watch flashing on Miss Self's wrist; it was so out of character. I puzzled as to how she had acquired it—was it perhaps a gift from one of her rich and grateful clients?

«Kicks», she said, emptying her glass with a shudder.

"Kicks."

«Alors,» she said, sucking her cigarillo, "you may recall our first interview. When you applied here as a potential employee of The Service. Recommended by Mr. Woodrow Hamilton—who, I regret to say, is no longer with us."

"0h?"

"For a serious infraction of Our Rules. Which is precisely what I want to discuss with you." She narrowed her pale Teutonic eyes; I felt the queasiness of a captured soldier about to be interrogated by the Commandant of the Camp. "I acquainted you with those rules in complete detail; but to refresh your memory, I will remind you of the more important ones. Firstly, any attempt by a member of our staff to blackmail or embarrass a client will result in severe retribution."

A vision of a strangled corpse floating in the Harlem River insinuated itself.

"Secondly, under no circumstances will an employee ever deal directly with a client; all contacts, and all discussion of fees, must be made through our auspices. Thirdly, and most especially, an employee must never associate socially with a client: that sort of thing is not good business and can result in very disagreeable situations."

She doused her cigarillo in the tequila, and downed a generous slug straight from the bottle. "On September eleventh you had an appointment with a Mr. Appleton. You spent an hour with him in his room at the Yale Club. Did anything unusual happen?"

"Not really. It was just a one-way oral deal; he didn't want any reciprocation." I paused, but her unsatisfied demeanor indicated that she expected to hear more. "He was in his early sixties, but in good condition, hearty. A likable guy. Friendly. He talked a lot; he told me he was retired and lived on a farm with his second wife. He said he raised cattle—"

Miss Self impatiently interrupted: "And he gave you a hundred dollars."

"Yes."

"Did he give you anything else?"

I decided not to lie. "He gave me his calling card. He said that if I ever felt like breathing country air, I was welcome to visit him."

"What became of this card?"

"I threw it away. Lost it. I don't know."

She lit another cigarillo, and smoked it until a long ash tumbled off it. She picked up an envelope lying on her desk, extracted a letter from it, and spread it out before her. "I've worked more than twenty years in this business, but this morning I received a letter unique in my experience."

As I may have mentioned before, one of my gifts is an ability to read upside down: those of us who subsist on our wits develop offbeat talents. So, while Miss Self examined the mysterious communication, I read it. It said: Dear Miss Self, I was well pleased with the amiable fellow you arranged to meet me at the Yale Club this past September 11th. So much so that I would like to get to know him better in a more gemütlich atmosphere. I wondered if it could be arranged, through your auspices, to have him spend the Thanksgiving holidays here at my farm in Pennsylvania? Say Thursday through Sunday. It would be a simple family gathering; my wife, some of my children, a few of my grandchildren. Naturally, I would expect to pay a reasonable fee, and I leave it to you to assess the amount. I trust this finds you well and in good spirit. Most sincerely, Roger W. Appleton.

Miss Self read the letter aloud. "Now," she snapped, "what do you say to that?" When I did not readily reply, she said: "There's something wrong. Something suspicious. But putting that aside, it stands in contradiction to one of our primary rules: a Service employee must never associate socially with a client. These rules are not arbitrary. They are founded on experience." Frowning, she tapped the letter with a fingernail. "What do you suppose this man could have in mind? A partouze? Involving his wife?"

Careful to sound indifferent, I said: "I can't see any harm in that."

"Ah, so," she accused me. "You see nothing against this proposal? You want to go."

"Well, frankly, Miss Self, I'd welcome a change of scenery for a few days. I've had a pretty rough time this past year or so."

She slugged down another double dose of the cactus juice; shuddered. "Very well, I will write Mr. Appleton, and ask a fee of five hundred dollars. Perhaps, for a sum like that, we can for once overlook a rule. And with your share of the profits, promise me you'll buy a raincoat."

Aces waved to me as I entered the Ritz bar. It was six o'clock and I had to squeeze my way toward him between the populated tables, for at cocktail time the bar brimmed with suntanned skiers recently descended from Alpine holidays; and pairs of expensive tarts keeping each other company while waiting to be winked at by German and American businessmen; and battalions of fashion writers and Seventh Avenue rag traders gathered in Paris to view the summer collections; and of course, the chic old blue-haired ladies-there are always several of them, elderly permanent residents of the hotel, ensconced in the Ritz bar sipping their allotted two martinis ("my doctor insists: so good for the circulation") before retiring to the dining room to chew in mute chandeliered isolation.

I had no sooner sat down than Aces was summoned to answer a telephone call. I had a good view of him, for the telephone is located at the far end of the bar; occasionally his lips moved, but mostly he seemed to be just listening and nodding. Not that I was really watching him, for my mind was still upstairs contemplating Kate McCloud's loose hair, her dreaming head-a spectacle so consuming that Aces' return startled me.

"That was Kate," he announced, looking self-satisfied: a mongoose digesting a mouse. "She wanted to know why you left without saying good-bye."

"She was asleep."

Aces always carries a mess of kitchen matches in a jacket pocket, it's one of his affectations; he lighted one with his thumbnail and touched the flame to a cigarette. "She may not seem so, but Kate's a very knowledgeable young woman—her instincts are usually sound. She liked you very much. And so," he said, grinning, "I'm in a position to make you a solid offer. Kate would like to hire you as a paid companion. You will receive a thousand dollars a month and all your expenses, including clothing and your own car."

I said: "Why did she marry Axel Jaeger?"

Aces blinked, as if this was the last reaction he had expected from me. He stalled. Then: "Perhaps a more interesting question would be—why did he marry her? And an even more interesting question is—how did Kate meet him? You see, Axel Jaeger is an elusive man. I've never encountered him myself, only seen paparazzi photographs: a tall man with a Heidelberg sword-scar across his cheek, thin, almost emaciated, a man in his late fifties. He comes from Dusseldorf, and inherited an ammunitions fortune from his grandfather, a fortune he has astronomically increased. He has factories all over Germany, all over the world-he owns oil tankers, oil fields in Texas and Alaska, he has the largest cattle ranch in Brazil, over eight hundred square miles, and a fair share of both Ireland and Switzerland (all the rich West Germans have been buying up Ireland and Switzerland: they think they'll be safe there if the bombs start falling again). Jaeger is easily the richest man in Germany-and possibly Europe. He's a German national, but he has a permanent Swiss residence permit; for tax reasons, naturally. To keep it, he has to spend six months of the year in Switzerland whether he likes it or not. God, what tortures the rich won't endure to protect a penny. He lives in a colossal, and colossally ugly, chateau on a Mountainside about three miles north of St. Moritz. I don't know anyone who has ever been inside the place. Except Kate, of course.

"As I understand it, he was, and is, a very convinced Catholic. And for that reason he remained married to his first wife for twenty-seven loyal years, or until she died. Even though she was unable to give him a child, which seems to have been the crux of the matter, for he wanted a child, a son, to continue the Jaeger dynasty. That being the case, why didn't he do the obvious and marry a well-bred, wide-hipped German girl who could fill up a nursery bim-bam? Certainly a clever soigné beauty like Kate would hardly seem the ideal choice for a man of Herr Jaeger's constrained austerity. And, so far as that goes, it's incomprehensible that Kate would find herself attracted to such a person. Money? That couldn't have been as issue. Actually, after I first really got to know Kate, she told me that her first marriage had been such a trauma, she never intended to marry again. And yet, within a few months, and without any signal, without ever mentioning that she even knew this legendary tycoon, she obtained a papal annulment from her first marriage and marries Jaeger in a Catholic ceremony at the Dusseldorf Cathedral. One year later the prayed-for heir arrives. Heinrich Rheinhardt Jaeger. Heinie. And a year after that, less than a year, she seems to have been dismissed from the Jaeger chateau, luggage et al., leaving the boy in the father's custody-though granted certain highly limited visiting privileges."

"But you don't know why?"

Aces thumbnailed another kitchen match, and blew it out. "The fall-out, or whatever one may call it, was as enigmatic as the alliance itself. She disappeared for several months, and a doctor I know told me she had spent them cloistered at the Nestlé Clinic in Lausanne. But as for what happened, she's not confided in me, and I've never had the courage to inquire. I suppose the only person who really knows is Kate's maid, Corinne. And when it comes to Miss Kate, Corinne is as close-mouthed as an Easter Island monument."

"Well. But why didn't they get a divorce?"

"The Catholic hang-up, I suppose. He would never countenance divorce."

"For Christ sake, she could divorce him, couldn't she?"

"Not if she ever wanted to see Heinie again. That door would be shut forever."

"Sonofabitch. I'd like to shove a shotgun up his ass and pull the trigger. Bastard. But you mentioned danger. I can't see where she has anything to be afraid of."

"Kate thinks she does. So do 1. And it isn't any paranoid fantasy that Jaeger has agents following her, or gathering information on her wherever she goes, whatever she does. If she changes a Kotex, you can be sure the Grand Seigneur hears about it. Look," he said, snapping his fingers for a waiter "let's have a drink. It's too late for daiquiris. How about a Scotch-soda?"

"I don't care."

"Waiter, two Scotch-soda. Now, as to this offer I've made you—are the terms satisfactory, or would you like a few days to think it over?"

"I don't have to think it over. I've already decided."

The drinks arrived, and he lifted his glass. "Then we'll drink to your decision, whatever it is. Though I hope it's yes."

"Yes."

He relaxed. "You're a godsend, P. B. And I'm sure you'll not regret it." Seldom has a more untrue prophecy been prophesied.

"Yes, it's yes. But. If he doesn't want a divorce, what does he want?"

"I have a theory. It's only a theory, but I'd bet my last chip that it's accurate. He intends to kill her." Aces tinkled the ice in his glass. "Since the strictness of his Catholicism forbids divorce, and because as long as she's alive she represents a threat to him, a threat to him and the custody of his child. So he means to kill her. Murder her in a manner that will look like an accident."

"Aces. Oh, come on. You're crazy. Either you're crazy. Or he is."

"On this particular subject, yes, I believe he is crazy. Hey," he said, "I just noticed something. Where's your dog?"

"I gave her to the lady upstairs."

"Well, well, well. I can see you really were quite impressed."

I walked all the way home from the Proustian-ghosted corridors of the Ritz to the rickety rat-trap halls of my hotel near the Gare du Nord. An elation lightened the journey—at last I wasn't a deadbeat expatriate, an aimless loser; I was a man with a mission in life, an assignment; and like some cub scout about to embark on his first overnight hike, my mind childishly churned with preparations. Clothes; I would need shirts, shoes, some good new suits, for nothing in my wardrobe would survive scrutiny in strong sunlight. And a weapon; tomorrow I would buy a.38 revolver and start practice at a shooting range. I walked fast, not simply because it was cold with that Seine-damp misty coldness peculiar to Paris, but because I hoped the exercise would so exhaust me that I would fall into dreamless sleep as soon as I put my head against a pillow. And I did.

But it was not a dreamless sleep. I well understand why analysts demand high payment, for what can be more tedious than listening to another person recount his dreams? But I'll chance boring you with the dream I dreamt that night, because in future time it came to be realized in almost every detail. In the beginning the dream was motionless, a seaside scene like a Boudin painting at the turn of the century. Still figures on a vast beach with an aquamarine sea just beyond them. A man, a woman, a dog, a young boy. The woman is wearing an ankle-length taffeta dress—sea breezes seem to be teasing its skirt; and she is carrying a green parasol. The man sports a straw boater; the boy is outfitted in a sailor suit. Eventually the picture comes into much closer focus, and I recognize the woman under the parasol—she's Kate McCloud. And the man, who now reaches to hold her hand, is myself. Suddenly the sailor-suited child seizes a stick and throws it into the waves; the dog rushes to retrieve it, and races back, shaking itself and shimmering the air with crystals of sea water.