“Hi,” he says.
“Afternoon,” the woman says, and looks at him.
“I’d like to take a swim,” he says, which is most certainly the truth.
“Yessir,” the woman says.
“Where do I change my clothes?” he asks. This is the truth, too, more or less. He sincerely wants to change his clothes, or rather Sam Hollip’s clothes, for somebody else’s clothes.
“Top of the stairs,” the woman says.
“Thank you,” Colley says, and smiles pleasantly, and walks out of the kitchen into a carpeted hallway.
Everybody’s outside, the house is still and empty, there are dust motes climbing shafts of sunlight in the living room. A woman laughs, her laughter hangs delicately on the air and then shatters like broken glass. He climbs the carpeted steps. He has never been inside a house like this in his life. He wonders if the owner of the house, the fat man in the red trunks and black-rimmed glasses, keeps a gun. He would certainly like a gun. Once he gets himself a change of clothes, which he is sure to do in the room at the top of the stairs, the only thing he will then need is a pistol. Guy has a house like this one, he’s got to have a gun in it someplace, protect the turf. The door at the top of the stairs is ajar, Colley can see into it, can see one angle of the bed, and on it clothes neatly laid out.
He goes into the room and closes the door.
There are only men’s clothes in here, the ladies have probably changed in another room. There are trousers and shirts and undershorts on the bed, and on the floor around the bed, lined up in pairs, there are shoes with socks tucked into them. Through the two open windows in the bedroom, he can hear people laughing and splashing and talking outside. He has a crazy idea for a minute — if there’s a bathing suit someplace around, maybe in one of the dresser drawers, he’ll put it on and go join the party. Stroll over to the bar, tell the nigger he’d like a gin and tonic. Then find the blonde in the white string bikini, tell her she looks very familiar, didn’t he once drink beer with her in a television commercial? It was right after they won the stickball game, remember? She will laugh her laugh, it will hang on the air and tinkle like glass.
Most of the guys outside looked fat to him, he wonders now if any of these clothes will fit him. He is beginning to think that he will never again in his lifetime wear his own clothes. When they put him in his coffin in excruciating detail, hands folded over a rosary on his chest, he will be wearing a silk sports shirt and gabardine trousers and stretch socks and patent-leather shoes belonging to some fat rich bastard in New Jersey. He searches on the bed for a pair of pants that seem to be about his size, and he finds a good-looking pair of white slacks, and a shirt made out of a synthetic fabric, polyester and cotton it says on the label, blue-and-green pattern on it, long-sleeved. The long sleeves are good because dear Marie back in the drugstore is sure to have told the trooper the man had a bandage on his arm and was kidding about rabies. He feels a little funny putting on another man’s undershorts, used undershorts at that, but he puts them on and then slips on the white pants, Jesus, they fit like a glove. He puts on the shirt then and rolls up the cuffs just two turns. He leaves the shirt hanging out of the pants. The socks are a pale blue, the shoes are white patent leather. The fuckin shoes are too small for him. He goes through the shoes lined up around the bed, looking inside for sizes. His own shoe size is 10½B, he finds a pair of 11’s and puts them aside, and then he finds a pair of 10’s, and he tries on first the 10’s and then the 11’s and decides the 10’s feel better. They are brown shoes, and they don’t go too well with the white pants and the polyester shirt, but that’s life, sweetheart.
The door opens.
A woman comes into the room.
“Hi,” she says, and smiles.
“Hi,” Colley says.
“I’m looking for the loo,” she says.
She is wearing an orange beach coat and high-heeled cork-soled wedgies. Long tanned legs, hair like a rust-colored mop. She has brown eyes and she wears orange lipstick that matches the beach coat. There is green shadow on her eyelids.
“Leaving so soon?” she says.
“I just got here,” he says.
“I’m Lili Shearson,” she says, and sticks out her hand.
“Steve Casatelli,” he says, and takes her hand awkwardly.
“I’d love to chat a while,” she says, smiling, “but I really have to tinkle. Is that it?” she says, indicating a door, and going immediately to it, and opening it. She sighs in anticipated relief, does a sort of Groucho Marx glide into the bathroom, and locks the door behind her.
Colley leaves the room at once, coming down the carpeted steps into the carpeted hallway. He cannot go out through the kitchen again because he told the black woman he was going to take a swim, and you don’t take a swim in white slacks and a blue-and-green polyester and cotton long-sleeved sports shirt. He wishes he could wait for the woman in the orange beach coat to come out of the bathroom to chat with him. He would love to chat with a woman who calls a toilet a loo, and a piss a tinkle. He wonders if the blonde in the white string bikini talks like that. He finds what he thinks must be the front door of the house, and he opens it and steps out onto an oval gravel driveway.
There is a pale-blue Cadillac sitting right in front of the house, the engine running. A woman is getting out of the car on Colley’s side, and a man is getting out on the driver’s side. A kid in blue jeans and a striped T-shirt is holding the door open for the woman. She smiles at Colley as she gets out of the car. He smiles back nervously. The man comes around the car and says “Hi” to Colley, and Colley says “Hi” back. The kid in the blue jeans says, “Be with you in a minute, sir,” and the man says to Colley, “Roger Lewis,” and sticks out his hand. “Steve Casatelli,” Colley says, and shakes hands with the man. “My wife Adrienne,” the man says. “Nice to see you,” the woman says. They both nod and smile and then go into the house without ringing the doorbell. Colley starts walking up the driveway.
The kid is parking the blue Cad on the road that runs past the house. There are a half-dozen cars parked in the oval driveway, and another dozen or more on the road. Colley figures he can drive away from here in style if he is willing to add a grand-larceny auto to what the cops already have on him. Counting the diner this morning, they have him on two separate counts of armed robbery, one in New York, the other in Jersey, and they have him on what they will probably call murder one, though it was actually self-defense, and they also have him on assault one in New Jersey, for shooting the cook who came at him with the cleaver, though that was self-defense too. So he figures adding the grand-larceny auto to all the rest isn’t going to make a hell of a difference, one way or the other. He has the feeling, in fact, that since nine o’clock last night, when he returned that cop’s fire and shot him dead in self-defense; since that minute and that second, nothing he’s done and nothing he’s about to do is going to change the situation in the slightest. He isn’t particularly worried about this, he figures Que sera, sera. So he continues walking up the driveway, knowing he is going to steal a car. When he was a member of the Orioles, they used to steal cars all the time, but only for joy-riding, dump them in the city someplace after they were done with them. It was easy stealing cars back in those days, but not as easy as it is going to be today. Today he is going to be handed the car of his choice on a silver platter. The kid is running up the driveway to meet him. “Yes, sir,” he says, “which one is it again?”