Джон Макдональд: All These Condemned

There was a sizable parking area, with five cars already parked. One beat-up station wagon, Wilma’s little steel-blue Austin-Healey, which she drives like a banshee with her hair on fire, a yellow Buick Skylark that I recognized as the Hesses’ car, a new-looking black MG that might be Steve Winsan’s, and a white Jaguar with a little line-drawing caricature of Judy Jonah on the door, leaving no doubt as to its ownership. I parked our crate at the auto show and a big Mexican with a long sad face came trotting out. I unlocked the rear end so he could get at the luggage. He told us to take the path around the house.

There was a big grass terrace on the right, all set up for English croquet with umbrellaed tables for the gallery. We went around the wing of the house to the big concrete terrace enclosed by the U of the structure. There were two sets of concrete steps that made slow curves down the rocky bank in front of the place to another and shallower terrace and two huge docks that stuck out into the blue lake. Two identical runabouts, fast-looking, well kept, were tied up at the dock. I saw water skis on the dock, or pier I guess would be a better word. They were built like Fort Knox, probably to withstand the ice in winter. Judy Jonah was down on the pier, face down on a red mat, and Gilman Hayes sat near her, his brown back heavily muscled, legs dangling over the edge.

Wilma came hurrying across the big terrace toward us, making little sounds of delight. She spread her arms as though she would hug us both at once. She wore a white dress so painfully simple that you could almost read the price tag. She kissed Mavis and cooed at her, and patted my arm and got between us and led us back to the group. Randy Hess and Steve Winsan untangled themselves from some sort of lounge affairs.

“Of course you know everybody,” Wilma said. “That’s the point of this whole party. We’re all friends. No strangers to adjust to.”

Noel Hess smiled at us in her mild way. Steve shook my hand in that outdoor-boy manner he uses as stock in trade. Randy Hess greeted us with that sort of apologetic nervousness of his that reminds me sometimes of a child that suspects he shouldn’t be hanging around the grownups so much.

“Your house is absolutely lovely,” Mavis told Wilma.

“Thank you, darling. Now come on, dears. I’ll show you your room. José should have your luggage in by now.”

We went off the terrace through a door in a glass wall and through a perfectly tremendous room, and then down the corridor of what was apparently a bedroom wing, to the first door. José was putting the last suitcase on a rack. We had a big window overlooking the lake. The room was paneled in some silvery wood. Everything was built in. A big dressing room between the bedroom and the bath turned it into a semisuite.

“Gosh!” Mavis said. It was the first honest sound I had heard out of her in a month. She recouped lost ground immediately, saying, “It’s perfectly dahling, dahling.”

“Suppose I send José in with a drink while you dears are freshening up,” Wilma said.

“Please,” Mavis said. “A Martini...”

“Extra dry, coming up. And you, Paul?”

“Bourbon and water, thanks,” I said. Mavis gave me the stone glare. I am supposed to take up Martinis. It makes no difference to her that to me they taste like battery acid and get me howling drunk in twenty minutes. I’m supposed to conform.

Wilma left and we did some unpacking in sepulchral silence. Mavis stalked into the bath first. José brought the drinks, Mavis’ in one of those little bottle things the way they’re served in the better bars. I laid out a pair of fresh slacks and a gray gabardine shirt. Mavis came out of the bathroom with her dress over her arm and took a fast knock at the Martini.

“Go easy on that nitro, honey,” I told her. “Last time you lost your sawdust.”

“Did I indeed?” she asked, one eyebrow high, a Wilma look.

“Your samba with that Hayes phony was more utilitarian than graceful.”

“Gil Hayes is a talented artist.”

“Gil Hayes is a carefully calculated eccentric. The rhythmic integrity of spatial design.” I made a rude noise.

“Oh, shut up,” she said. It was the second honest sound she’d made within twenty minutes. Maybe there was hope left. From the neck down she looked very pink and pleasant indeed. She detected the examination and turned away quickly, saying, “Don’t get messy.”

When I came out of the bathroom she was gone, glass and all. I sat on the bed and finished my bourbon and thought dark thoughts about the week end. We couldn’t legitimately leave until Sunday before noon. That meant getting through two evenings and one day of fun and games. And it would be a week end like one of those simplified models of the structure of the atom, with Wilma as the nucleus, and all her pet electrons whirling around the edge.

I dressed and went out. I found Randy in the big living room. He was biting his lip and fiddling with Wilma’s high-fidelity setup. It was built into the west wall. I know a little bit about such things, so I went over and watched him diddle around. There was a Magnecord tape recorder racked the way you see them in radio studios. It had the hubs for one-hour tapes. There was a big Fisher amplifier, a Garrard changer fitted into a drawer, a Craftsman tuner, a big corner speaker enclosure. There was a control panel with switches marked for the various rooms so you could shunt the music around where you wanted it, an electronic mixer panel, and a studio mike. It looked like a good three thousand dollars’ worth of equipment. Randy, with shaky hands, was trying to thread the tape around the empty hub and across the heads of the recorder. He gave me a nervous smile. “Little music coming up,” he said.

Wilma came in off the terrace. “Really, Randy,” she said in a most unpleasant voice. “A simple little thing like that. Just get out of the way. Here. Hold my drink.”

He held her glass. Her fingers were deft. She threaded the tape, fastened it to the empty reel, turned on the recorder. The tape began to turn slowly onto the empty reel. “Bring me a fresh one, Randy.” He hurried off obediently.

The music started. It was alive in the room. Clear and perfect. It made the back of my neck tingle. She adjusted the volume, frowned at the panel board, then clicked a switch labeled “Terrace.”

She said, “You lose something if you try to operate too many speakers at once. This one is the best one here. I’ll turn it off so we can get the most out of the terrace enclosure. Don’t try to answer any question Judy might ask you about the program.”

The abrupt change caught me off balance. I had the stupid idea she meant the program of music. And then I realized she meant the television program we had sponsored until Judy went off for the summer.

“I can’t answer any questions because I don’t know the answers, Wilma.”

She patted my cheek. “That’s a dear.” She was standing quite close to me. There is an odd quality about her. When you are close to her you are so very conscious of her physically. Her mouth looks redder, her skin softer; her breathing seems deeper. It is an almost overpowering aliveness, and it has a strong sexual base to it. It is impossible for any normal man to stand close to Wilma and talk to her without having his mind veer inevitably toward bed. It is, perhaps, the same quality that Miss Monroe had. It fogs up your mind when you want it to be clear. And she is perfectly aware of that.

We went back out on the terrace. She frowned. “Randy, it’s just a tiny bit too loud out here. Be a dear and run in and turn it down just a shade more.”

Randy went buckety-buckety into the living room. Noel looked down into her glass.