“Complicated,” she said, meaning she’d lost interest.
So I dropped the subject, permanently, so far as I knew. “You live in Manhattan?”
“Sometimes,” she said. She brooded at her glass, which was empty, and frowned out ahead of her at Central Walk, stretching away on a straight line in the shimmering heat all the way through Fair Harbor and as far as Saltaire. “It’s hot out here,” she said. “Bad as dancing. How much farther is this place?”
“Two blocks.” I pointed, saying, “See the house with the American flag? We turn there.”
“So that’s what that is,” she said.
We kept walking, elbow-deep in running children, and when we got to the house with the flag I saw the patriot himself out on his front deck, glowering at the world. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and an undershirt, and his snow-white hair made a nice contrast with his lobster-red skin. “Howdy,” I called, and gestured at his flag. “I’m from the States myself,” I said.
His mouth moved but he didn’t actually say anything, maybe because he didn’t have his teeth in.
We made our turn onto the boardwalk and I led the way to Ralph and Candy’s house. The kids, happily, were away. We stepped into the cooler dimmer interior and Liz handed me her glass. “Don’t mind if I do,” she said.
I handed it back. “That’s the refrigerator,” I told her, “and that bottle has something in it you’ll like.” I gave her my own empty glass and said, “And I’m drinking rum and tonic.”
She shrugged and went behind the counter to make the drinks. The left side of this house was living room and dining room and kitchen combined in one open area, with a counter separating the kitchen work space. A doorway led to the two bedrooms and bath, and a ladder next to the doorway led up to the sleeping loft, which at this time of day would be as hot as a stolen nymphomaniac. In theory, that was my place up there, though of course I’d been planning to spend most of my time in the master’s bedroom. With Ralph in residence, however, I’d taken to sleeping on the living room sofa, where the three children could rollick me awake every morning.
My wet shirt was sticking to me like an airmail stamp. Standing in the living room, waiting for my drink, I unbuttoned it and peeled it off and threw it away in a corner. I slid my palm down my slippery chest and dried it on my pants, and Liz brought me my drink. “You’re wet,” she said.
“I thought I was.” I sipped at my glass and said, “The tonic gets here later?”
“Too strong?” She reached for my drink, saying, ‘Here, I’ll fix it.
“No, it’s fine,” I said, and as long as her hand was extended toward me I took her by the wrist and brought her in close. She gave me a quizzical look, and when we kissed she had exactly the salt and musk and sex taste I’d been looking for. “You’re overdressed, too,” I told her.
2
Candy, her eyes blazing and her voice an angry half-whisper, said, “Did you have to use our bed?”
A very ambivalent pronoun. “I was so used to it,” I said. I spoke in a normal tone of voice. We were both in the kitchen, me making drinks and Candy making hamburgers. The kids were out someplace beneath the setting sun, and Ralph had taken Newsweek into the bathroom.
Candy was so enraged already she paid no attention to what I’d said. “What if Ralph notices something?” she demanded.
“That’s not the kind of Ralph-noticing you have to worry about,” I told her. “You keep making faces at me in front of him, even Ralph is going to tip wise.”
“I could smell her on my pillow last night, I couldn’t sleep.”
“I slept like a top,” I said. “Until seven-thirty, of course, when the kids came in and did their reenactment of the Battle of Blenheim.”
She suddenly dissolved into cunning little tears. “Why are you so mean? It isn’t my fault Ralph is here. Don’t you see how jealous I am? I wanted that to be me in bed with you.” She waved the spatula in distraction.
“I know, Candy,” I said gently. She was after all my hostess, and I had after all sublet my apartment. I rested my hand on her shoulder; the flesh was warm from either sun or passion. “This is hard on both of us,” I said.
She put the spatula down and folded herself in against me. Her bathing suit top and cut-down blue jean shorts left a lot of skin available to my soothing hands. I kissed the side of her neck, and found it less interesting. She kissed my mouth, hungrily, and whispered, “Maybe later tonight, when Ralph starts on his paper work, we’ll say we’re going to Hommel’s for a drink.”
“And screw in the poison ivy?”
“Well find a place!” she whispered shrilly, and the phone rang. She gave it a look of fury, then glanced with sudden caution over toward the doorway leading to the bathroom. Backing away from me, she whispered more calmly, “We’ve found places before, Art, and we can do it again.” Then she hurried around the end of the counter and picked up the phone on the second ring. “Hello?” Her face became angry again; she seemed about to hang up, or say something loud, but then she took a deep breath and said, “Yes, he is.” She extended the phone toward me, saying coldly, “It’s her.”
“Her?” Surprised and intrigued, I walked around and picked up the phone, saying to Candy, “Make my drink for me, will you? My usual.”
She went back to the kitchen area, but then she stood there and watched me and listened. I put the phone to my face and said hello, and Liz’s well-remembered voice said, “Who was that?”
“My hostess,” I said, with a sweet smile toward Candy.
“She sounds like a bitch.”
“Interesting analysis.”
“I’m calling to invite you to a little party,” she said.
“Oh?” Looking at Candy, I knew I didn’t dare ask for a rain check on tonight’s philander. “When?” I said.
“Tomorrow, around eight.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’d like that.” Candy glowered.
There were pencil and a note pad on the telephone table, and I took down the directions to Liz Kerner’s house. There was no fence on the beach itself, so I should walk along there and turn inland only after I’d breached the Point O’ Woods border. “I’ll be there,” I said.
“Don’t overdress,” she said, and we both hung up.
Candy suddenly started making my drink. “She sounded like a bitch,” she said.
“That’s funny,” I said. “She remarked how sweet your voice was.”
“Oh, I’m sure. Now look what you did, I’m burning the hamburgers.”
Mend your fences while you still have some left. “After dinner,” I said, “you and I, we’ll go to Hommel’s.”
She flashed me a quick, lasciviously grateful smile, and went back to turning hamburgers.
3
When she opened her front door to me, Liz was wearing a white dress with a fitted bodice and pleated skirt and a narrow white patent-leather belt around the waist. I’d heard the fifties were coming back, and here they were. “This time,” I said, “you really are overdressed.”
“I beg your pardon?” Her frown seemed equal parts puzzlement and disapproval. Somewhere behind her a piano discreetly tinkled “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
“What’s under that, I wonder,” I said, and then Liz appeared all over again, behind this one, wearing a purple T-shirt dress with no bra. “Oh,” I said.
“So there you are,” Liz said, the Liz in purple. To the non-Liz in white she said, “This is the riffraff I told you about.”
“You’re the sister,” I said.
Liz said, “They can’t get them past you, can they? Come on in, before we fill up with mosquitoes.”