She left them and Foley and Cundo had to look at each other, Cundo squinting.
"The fuck is going on?"
"I don't know," Foley said, "unless she wants to poison us."
Dawn raised the eyeliner pencil to the serious eyes staring at her in the bathroom mirror. She began to retrace the line on her eyelid and stopped and put the pencil on the edge of the sink, still looking at herself.
The boys-will-be-boys were beginning to gang up on her, still convicts with their buddy system and the guy-thing: guys were bigger than girls-in its usual application-so they were the boss and the boss was always right. From the beginning she was afraid they might get into a buddy act, hoping Foley was above it, but the guy-thing was part of each guy since birth. He's pulled slippery out of his mother and the nurse takes him and tells everybody it's a boy, hoping he doesn't grow up to be as haughty and arrogant as some of these fucking doctors. Cundo would make a remark and look at Foley to get his approval. He doesn't ever look at you. The one in the mirror said, "The prick."
By now Foley would have no intention of taking Cundo's money. His fortune. He was hanging out with his buddy. Dawn in the mirror said, "How much more time can you devote to the Cat Prince, Jesus, you waited eight years for this?"
On her own now.
The one in the mirror seemed to feel pretty confident about it. She said, "Why not?"
Right. The two buddies weren't the ones with all the money anyway.
Little Jimmy had the keys to the vaults: the payer of Cundo's accounts, owner of Cundo's homes. What he didn't have were the balls to do the guy-thing. And he loved her. Always dying to go to bed and show her some tricks. Or use the sofa, or the top of the television set-reminding Dawn of the porno flick, the girl about to light a cigarette pauses and says to the grocery deliveryman going down on her, "You mind if I smoke while you eat?"
Dawn picked up the eyeliner pencil and the raised face in the mirror said, "Wait. Why not get in the mood. Use the kohl."
The black kohl paste. She traced it over the eyeliner already adding an exotic look, brought the pencil along her lower lid and made the circle again and she was looking at herself with Egyptian eyes for the first time since she posed for Cundo's shots, the blond pharaoh with the eyes of Hatshepsut.
It was Marlene Locklear, the renowned spiritualist, who regressed Dawn under hypnosis to discover that in a past life, an astonishing 3,500 years ago, Dawn was Hatshepsut, daughter of a pharaoh and became a pharaoh herself: kind of a b.c. character who dressed as a male ruler with the khat head cloth, the shendyt kilt and the king's false beard. She held off the guys with their Upper and Lower Nile guy-thing and the threat of revolt, Hatshepsut playing a lone hand until her death in 1458 b.c.
"That was you," the Dawns said to each other, and thought, If you were pharaoh and a couple of hieroglyph rock chiselers were giving you a hard time…What would you do?
TWENTY
THEY GOT ON HER AGAIN THE NEXT DAY. FOLEY STOPPED BY as she was fixing breakfast for a change-Cundo saying the fucking eggs were too runny, the coffee was like water; Dawn saying, "Then hire a cook, you cheapskate."
It was an insult to his being a man, the little Cuban still a macho guy. Foley came in, Cundo told him to sit down, have a cup of watery coffee. Foley said no thanks, he came over to get the check.
Dawn said, "What check?"
"The one for ten thousand you picked up."
"You want to endorse it for us?"
"I'm giving it back."
"I get nothing for all the advice and counsel I gave her?" Foley turned to Cundo seated at the kitchen table. "Not once," Dawn said, "did she tell me she was faking, and I spent a lot more time with her than you did, Dr. Jack."
In this moment she was thinking she should pull back a little, and Cundo saved her from talking too much.
He said, "Give him the check."
"I have spent quite a lot of time on this failure."
"Give him the fucking check."
"You now do whatever Dr. Jack wants?"
"Don't call him that again," Cundo said. "Flip the fucking egg and go get the check."
She said to Foley, "You want me to tear it up?"
"I told you, I'm giving it back," Foley said.
"You think that'll get her pants off?"
"Jesus Christ," Cundo said, and put his hand flat on the table to get up.
Dawn laid the spatula on the range and left them.
"She wants that ten grand," Foley said.
"Keep it for yourself," Cundo said. "I won't have to give you an allowance. Last night she kept telling me the guy's ghost is in the house, whether the Karmanos woman was faking or not. I said to her, 'Honey,' in a nice way, 'will you please shut the fuck up.' Eight years inside I dream about her. I come out, she acts like she's my wife."
"It's none of my business," Foley said, "but I wouldn't let her put the houses in her name."
"She say something to you?"
"No, but I bet it's what she wants."
"The homes gonna stay with Little Jimmy."
"Watch she doesn't get too close to him."
"Last night when she don't shut up I slapped her a pretty good one across the face," Cundo said. "It stung my hand. I was sorry and tole her I try not to hit her again. But maybe I shouldn't have said that."
She came in the kitchen and handed Foley the check folded in half. He felt her hand touch his and saw her smile as she changed from a woman who was always right to a girl with green eyes circled in black, the way she was in some of the photos, having fun, with a serious intent.
"I might as well tell you," Dawn said, "what I was hoping to do with the money, get Cundo some new outfits so he'll look cool at his homecoming party, a big welcome-home blast, and invite everybody on the canal. It's a costume party, you have to wear a mask, since we don't know any of the people anyway. But, what'll make it the Venice party of the year, we have it on the roof."
"Costume party," Cundo said, "so she can do her Egyptian number. You have it on the roof, somebody'll fall off and kill themself."
"We string colored lanterns along the edge," Dawn said, "to show just how far you can go." She said to Foley, "What do you think?"
"About a bunch of masked drunks stumbling around forty feet from the ground…?"
"We can have it in the street, anywhere we want," Dawn said. "We have to celebrate Cundo's return."
Cundo said, "You want a party, you pay for it."
"We can talk about it some other time," Dawn said. "Remember, I'm fixing dinner this evening for my favorite guy. We want you to be here, Jack, and I've asked Little Jimmy. Oh, and I'm getting Tico to help me serve and clean up." She looked at Foley again. "You're going to see Danny later on?"
"For lunch."
"At her home?"
"Some place in Beverly Hills."
"So you might not make dinner."
"Jesus Christ," Cundo said, "he can keep the check or give it back and go to bed with the broad, it's his money, right? He can tear it up, he can give it to a bum, he can do anything he wants with it, so leave him the fuck alone, all right? Please."
Foley waited for Cundo to finish, said thanks, and asked if he could borrow the car.
"Take it, I'm not going nowhere."
Dawn said, "If you're picking Danny up…"
Foley said, "Yeah, at her house."
Dawn said, "She looks at the VW, garage paint on the front bumper-"
Cundo said, "Leave me out of this."
"Where my darling scrapes the bumper now and then driving into the garage-twice a day since he's been home. I see Danny look at the car, she says, 'Jack, why don't we take my Cadillac?' And gives you a half-assed reason why she doesn't want to be seen in a twelve-year-old VW."