Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

Impassioned and angry, she went through all the drawers. She found a studded leather collar and a Polaroid photograph of a red-haired woman in a complete outfit, brandishing a riding crop. She didn’t understand exactly what that meant, but she knew it implied some sort of contact. He had obviously gone beyond masturbatory fantasies.

Was he having an affair with some bizarre sadistic woman? The images that flooded her mind were appalling, humiliating. The thought of him coming home to bed from some hole in the wall where he had let a pervert whip him was sickening.

She finished packing, not bothering now whether she had enough things. She wanted to get out. She made sure she had her copy of her manuscript and book. She waited until it was seven o’clock in the morning before phoning Betty. She still woke her up.

“I’m coming over right away.”

“Okay,” said a sleepy voice. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll be over right away.” She hung up and looked at the magazines, the collar, the Polaroid lying on the coffee table where she had examined them.

Sooner or later she’d have to tell him. She’d rather do it without having to see his face.

She picked up her suitcase and walked out. She left them behind, exposed grotesque fossils of their now extinct relationship. That would suffice as her Dear John letter.

After Tony had been cleaned up, Andrea Warren drove him back to Malibu in her car. He could remember only a few blurry moments of the drive, his face buried in the soft upholstery of the Mercedes. He woke up when he felt stillness: he saw Andrea’s small body at the door to Garth’s house, talking to two figures, who peered out at him. They came toward him eventually— he tried to get himself up, but his body had a mule’s stubbornness, moving only when forced to.

“Hey, man,” Garth’s face said to him. He felt arms reaching under him.

Helen, looking beautiful, her eyes sympathetic, her long hair falling on tanned shoulders like an innocent Tahitian girl’s, smiled sweetly: “We’ll get you to bed.”

They put his arms around their shoulders and became his crutches. Andrea held the wooden gate open. Tony’s head flopped from side to side, a helpless newborn. He rested on Helen’s shoulder and found himself looking straight down her nightshirt at those remarkable breasts, full and long, big nipples, standing with languid elegance, erect, but not arrogant. He kissed the top of her chest, his lips smacking. “God, they’re beautiful!” he shouted.

She laughed. A deep, throaty, amused noise, unselfconscious and welcoming. He heard Garth say: “He’ll be fine,” to someone, and then time skipped, a needle dancing across the record surface, making nonsense of the music.

Without Tony knowing how, he was in a bedroom. Garth stood a few feet away, naked except for bright blue underpants.

There was hot liquid in him. He forced his eyes open and saw a large mug at his lips, a light green pool lapping at his mouth, its gentle tide infiltrating, warming him, his head clearing. He heard the pleased chuckle again.

“He’s turning me on,” a voice at his side said.

“I don’t mind, if you don’t,” Garth answered, squinting with concentration.

Like a picture coming into focus, he could now see. His eyes must have been closed before. He was lying in their bed, naked. His right thumb was rubbing Helen’s nipple, while his palm caressed its underside. But she wasn’t looking at that, her eyes were on his genitals. Tony glanced down and saw he had an erection, so complete in its yearning that it arched above his belly, a missile angling for launch. She was holding a mug of tea to his mouth.

“I thought booze made you boys impotent,” she commented pleasantly to her husband. They spoke as if he weren’t conscious.

“He’s young,” Garth said with his patented ironic smile, almost a sneer, one comer of his mouth furrowing. Tony closed his eyes again. “And horny. It’s been two months. Told you we should have gotten him a girl.”

“Shouldn’t we let him sleep?” she asked in a halfhearted tone.

“This’ll deal with tomorrow’s hangover.”

“I’m not out,” Tony heard himself say. He wanted to shut up, continue pretending unconsciousness, but he was still too drunk to dissemble. He spoke the words together, all soft vowel sounds.

“What?” Helen asked, moving the cup away.

Tony opened his eyes. At first he couldn’t focus on anything. “I’m awake!” he shouted, so his words would be clear. He stared at her, seeing that she was also nude. He told himself to let go of her breast, but his hand held on. Looking into her eyes, he forgot everything else. They were all that existed in the universe. Again, he wasn’t sure who he was — he felt very young, lying in bed with a beautiful motherly woman smiling lovingly at him. “I’m only pretending to be drunk!” he yelled again, slurring his words so badly that “drunk” came out “drugged.”

He heard Garth laugh. “It’s a very good performance,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said in his direction, but when he swung his head that way, he felt his stomach swish and slosh sickeningly, a bag full of water precariously connecting his torso to his legs. He groaned.

“Easy,” she said, and he felt her arms, very warm, come around him. He closed his eyes. Her breasts pressed against his tired, tired face. Her heat swelled over him, a mother bear protecting her cold child.

“I’m asleep,” he mumbled and let go of the world.

The rest is silence, David Bergman repeated to himself, hearing Richard Burton’s long hiss of sorrow from his high-school drama-class days, the sour-faced teacher standing rapturously beside the big box of a turntable. David moved through the nightmare with a still mind, becalmed of anxiety. The rest is silence, a dead actor’s voice told him.

Chico had taken it hard. He shouted and pleaded with the Brazilian police, switching from nervous pleas for understanding to arrogant demands for freedom from questioning. He had made a brief feint at pretending they didn’t know who the dead man was — but he soon gave that up and began shouting for the right to communicate with Newstime. Not only to have this story explode in their face but also to be scooped on it was the cause of Chico’s agony.

He hasn’t realized yet, David coolly observed, that our careers are over. Neither of them would ever be Groucho.

After twelve hours they were freed and permitted to leave the country. Newstime having agreed to release and in fact surrendering all the information they had on Gott. In a brief phone conversation with Rounder. Chico had been told that Newstime was making a completely open response to the event.

On the flight home, they had in hand the first burst of world news coverage. The pertinent embarrassment, that Newstime had been in the process of paying Hans Gott for his story, was mentioned only in passing — David knew it would take until the second editions for the criticisms to begin. The simple facts were that his killer, Tamar Gurion, arrested at the scene peacefully, was the descendant of a Jewish family — most of whom, she claimed, had been victimized in the camps by Mengele and Gott. Whether the dead man was in fact Gott was still in question, and it was this problem that obsessed Chico throughout the flight.

“I think we owe it to Mrs. Thorn to make no comment until we’ve talked it out with her and Richard,” Chico said, knowing they would be mobbed by reporters at the airport. David noticed Chico was now calling Rounder by his first name — usually he contemptuously referred to him as Rounder, sometimes as Round Robin.

“I thought he said we should be open,” David said. “Doesn’t that mean answering all questions?”