A. Fair - All Grass Isn't Green

“There’s only one thing you’ll have to put up with.”

“What’s that?”

“The water in the shower,” I said, “is at what they call room temperature.”

“And what is room temperature?”

“Pretty damn cold if you take it in the morning,” I said.

“How long do I have to stay there?”

“Until I come and get you.”

“Can’t you telephone the...”

I shook my head. “I told you,” I said, “I was taking you to a place that’s isolated. No reporter is going to find you there. No one is going to find you there, not even Sergeant Frank Sellers of the Los Angeles Police Force, who is probably going to be looking for you.”

We started out. We had a long, long drive ahead of us, but if they found her at El Golfo de Santa Clara, they could get rich finding needles in haystacks.

Even taking a shortcut by way of Puertecitos and Riito, it’s a long ways from Mexicali to El Golfo de Santa Clara, but one thing was certain-no one was going to be looking for a missing witness at El Golfo.

From the time the road passes Riito, it runs down as a straight and virtually deserted ribbon through barren desert country until it comes to the place where it drops down from the higher country and comes to the alluvial deposit of the Colorado River near the Gulf.

Then, after a few miles, one comes to El Golfo Santa Clara, a little fishing village, beautifully picturesque, where a fishing fleet is tended by an ancient amphibious “duck” which goes from boat to boat as sort of water taxi, bringing in fish and passengers.

The fish are used to supply the local restaurants and are the overflow of the cargoes which the fishing fleet keep iced for commercial deliveries.

Here also is where the supply of clams for the California markets comes from. Miles and miles and miles of tideflats are literally filled with clams. Clammers light boats with outboard motors, drive them up over mud flats, wait until the tide goes out, then start gather clams. By the time the tide comes back in high enough float the boat, the clammers will have a load of clams which, when brought to the United States, will command a fancy price.

Aside from that and the few tourists who know of the fishing and the clamming, El Golfo basks serene and deserted in the sunlight of the Gulf.

The motel there is clean with indoor plumbing and showers in the Mexican style which tend to flood the floor of the bathroom whenever a shower is taken, and water, as I had remarked, was at “room temperature.”

Nanncie was a good sport and I felt she could put up with things and be happy.

On the way down I had a chance to get acquainted with her.

“You must think I’m something of a tramp,” said.

“Why?”

“Well, I have done so much for Cole Hale and I’m friendly with Milt Calhoun and I’m — I have quite a few friends.”

I could see she wanted to talk so I just devoted my attention to driving the car.

She said, “It’s hard for an outsider to understand the way we live — us writers.”

Again I kept quiet.

She said, “It’s’ sort of a society of its own, a freemasonry. We have very close friendships, but we’re not prepossessed with sex the way some people think. It’s more like an organization where everybody is just a close friend, as though we were all men or all women. We have so many things to think of, so much to do, so much to keep us occupied.

“Life is something of a struggle. We have to support ourselves and it’s a grim fight, but it’s a lot of fun.

“We watch the mail for envelopes, rejection slips with the returned manuscripts, and now and then a check.

“For the most part, we hit the smaller markets, the religious magazines, the trade magazines. We sell fillers, little articles, sometimes a short story of fiction.

“We all seem to keep just about one jump ahead of the landlord, and after you get to be a real part of the gang you can make a touch once in a while if a person has sold two or three good articles in succession and you’re up against it for the rent. You can make a small touch to tide yourself over. But woe to you if you don’t pay back at the first opportunity you have. The deadbeat is completely ostracized.

“It’s hard to tell you how we work out’ there on Billinger Street. It’s something like — well, from all I can hear, it’s like Greenwich Village in New York used to be many, many years ago.”

“And Milton Calhoun fits into that picture?” I asked.

“He emphatically does not fit into that picture,” she said, “and that’s why I’m afraid of him. Milt wants to be received as a friend, but you know instinctively that he isn’t one of us. If I married him I’d be jerked out of the environment I love so well. We’d be on the French Riviera, or cruising in yachts. If I wanted to have friends visit me in that environment I’d be uncomfortable and so would they.

“Right now Milt tries hard to be one of the gang, despite the act he puts on he’s an outsider.”

“Do you mean he’s a hypocrite?” I asked.

“No, no, no, I’m afraid you don’t know what I mean. You don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you.

“Milt thinks that is a poor life. He would like to me from that life. That’s the way he thinks of it as a rescue. He would like to marry me when he becomes free and give me a big house and servants and a yacht and the stuff that still goes with extreme wealth.”

“And you don’t want it?”

“I don’t want any part of it, not the way I feel now. I like Milt. I’m tremendously fond of him. I could probably fall in love with him if I’d let myself, but I love this life that I’m living, this being just one jump ahead of landlord, this studying the magazines, the writer’s magazines, looking for tips on what can be sold and where can be sold.

“Sometimes I’m a little behind in the rent, sometimes I’ve even been short on postage, but I’m one of the gang. We all of us sort of pull together. It’s a great life and I like it.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “you’re getting the cart before horse.”

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps you ought to rescue Calhoun.”

“Rescue him from what?”

“From the same thing he’s trying to rescue you from.”

“I don’t get it.”

“From the life he leads,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, then laughed. “He’d like that!”

“Here’s a guy with money running out of his ears. He puts in his day turning to the financial column of the papers, reading the stock listings, giving orders to his brokers, having all the accessories of wealth including a dissatisfied wife. You could save him from all that.”

“Yes,” she said, laughing. “I’ve even thought of that. Suppose I did marry him and had all the glittering embellishments of wealth. Pretty quick he’d be burying his nose in the financial page at breakfast and then hurrying away to give orders to his brokers. I’d be sitting there — I won’t say a bird in a gilded cage because it’s too damn much of a cliché, but you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” I said.

“Why not tell Calhoun that if he’ll cut himself off from his bank account and move down on Billinger Street, take up writing and support himself by his earnings, you’ll feel different about it?”

She laughed gleefully. “It would be a great gag at that. I’d like to see his face when I pull that on him.”

“And Hale?” I asked. “What about Hale?”

“Hale,” she said, “is one of the gang. He’s a friend.

“Good Lord, I run onto a chance to give him a real first-class article on dope smuggling. It’s something that a man has to do — a woman can’t do it.