Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

An anxious pause; then, almost imperceptibly, Katherine nodded yes.

“I thought so. Oh, Kathy.” Paul lay down next to his wife. All his passion had drained off; he felt only affection and pity, as well as tremendous relief (after all, he was not suffering from delusions). “You don’t want to read that kind of thing,” he told her. “I mean, I’m not angry, I know you meant it well. But those books are just cheap. They’re all wrong, anyway.”

He stroked his wife’s face and hair; but she turned on her side away from him, drawing up her knees as if she could hide inside her own body.

“Besides, hon,” he went on. “I like you the way you are. I don’t want you to learn any techniques.” Since it was presented to him, he caressed his wife’s back. “That kind of thing is all wrong for you, because you’re not really like that.” Now Paul stroked his wife’s hips, pale and smooth. As he did so, desire began to rise in him slowly again; not the burning greed he had felt earlier for Ceci in Katherine’s body, but a gentler lust, mixed with compassion.

“Come on back, silly,” he said. He turned her face towards him. It was set in a sullen inward expression. He shut his eyes, and kissed the pretty prim mouth. It remained resistant, even under warm and continued pressure, and when he drew back the expression had not changed.

“Ah, Kathy. Don’t be hurt. I’m sorry. Come on. I want to make love to you.”

“Not now,” Katherine said distantly. “I don’t feel like it now.” Pulling away from his arms, she sat up. “Excuse me,” she said in the voice she might have used in a hospital corridor. “I have to go to the washroom.”

Paul blinked, left alone in the room; then he sat up on the edge of the bed, feeling depressed and baffled. Bending down with what felt like a great effort, he picked his crumpled shirt off the floor. Ah, damn them all to hell. He smiled wryly.

But then a real smile, though not much of one, appeared on his face. Everything mended itself in time; Katherine would get over this, though not at once (such an exposure could not help but be very mortifying for a girl of her delicacy and inexperience); and, above all, he had just succeeded in completely forgetting about Ceci for nearly half an hour.

20

KATHERINE GRIPPED THE STEERING-WHEEL with both hands as the car swept along Sunset Boulevard towards Hollywood, past the mansions of the stars. The road banked and curved like an amusement-park track; what must it be like in the winter!—but of course that didn’t matter: no time was winter here. Expensive, shiny cars gunned their engines behind her, and blew their horns to make her go faster; so recklessly she went faster, spinning past castles and palms, fountains, banks of roses, and gateposts with plaster lions or urns.

It was her afternoon to work for Dr. Einsam, but instead she was going to Hollywood to answer Glory Green’s fan mail. It was Iz’s idea, of course. Katherine did not know exactly what it meant, or what she thought of it. Was she being sent as a spy, or an emissary? Or was she merely bearing coals of fire, as Iz had suggested when he said: “She needs a secretary; I’ve got a secretary. So, I can help her out; it’s as simple as that.” When Katherine began to inquire further, he interrupted her, saying that she didn’t have to go if she didn’t want to: it made absolutely no difference to him. Meaning, for she knew his language by now, that it made some absolute difference to him. It would have been very uncomfortable in the office and everywhere else, if she had refused. Besides, she was curious.

Following Iz’s directions, she turned up towards the Hollywood hills, driving more slowly. Now that she was nearly there, she felt not only curious but uneasy, even frightened. Thinking to prepare herself somehow for this job, or this meeting, she had gone to a musical film in which Glory had a part. It was the sort of movie she would never have seen, otherwise. Sitting alone in the dark theater, she saw projected before her the image of a bright, noisy, completely artificial world in which everyone was handsome and physically vital, ageless and brand new, like their clothes and furniture. At every opportunity they broke into loud song and dance. Presently Glory’s first scene came on. A group of chorus girls with identical costumes and differently colored hair (chestnut, orange, yellow, black) flashed across the screen, strenuously smiling and kicking and winking. Was that Iz’s wife? she thought, astonished, as a face five feet high, framed in pink curls, came by; she turned round to look at the rest of the audience, as if they too might be surprised. But the three hundred faces behind her, lit by the reflections of Technicolor, all wore the same expression of passive enchantment.

Katherine drove more slowly still. If Glory were really like that, why had Iz married her? Maybe that was what he—what all men—wanted, or thought they wanted. If she weren’t like that, after all, why had she become a movie starlet? Katherine could imagine no profession more horrible. The idea of exposing oneself, almost naked, to all those people, prancing about in front of them to be stared at invisibly and intimately by hundreds and thousands, was revolting to her. She wondered how any normal human being could bear it, no matter for what reward.

But Glory Green was obviously not a normal human being. She had pink hair and a thirty-eight inch bust at least, and no education; she had been on the stage since she was five and had been married three times, starting at fifteen, when Katherine hadn’t even been kissed. That was what the secretaries in the Social Sciences office said. She had lived all her life in a violent, vulgar world, and even Iz hadn’t been able to change her. The girls in the office said that she had just been in a public brawl, where she screamed at policemen and reporters, and slapped a girl in the face who hadn’t even spoken to her. Katherine hadn’t seen the papers, so she didn’t know how much of this to believe. Iz had never mentioned it, and she wasn’t going to ask him. It was bad enough for him that he had to be married to, and obsessed with, a girl like that (because he was still obsessed with her, she knew).

Oh lord, here was the house already, or rather its number on a rustic mail-box, at the bottom of a steep bank topped with a redwood fence. Katherine began to wish she had not come, but she pulled her car to the side of the road and, setting her mouth, got out. She climbed some steps to a gate in the fence, and rang the bell.

There was a long wait. Katherine wondered if she should go away; she wanted to go away; but Iz had promised that she would come. Finally she could hear someone approaching. Movement was visible through the slits in the gate; then it was flung open. A figure completely enveloped in a long pink beach-robe, sunglasses, and a huge conical straw hat, stood looking at her. It was Glory, but Katherine, not unnaturally, did not recognize her.

“Does Glory Green live here?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Glory said in a hoarse whisper, looking Katherine over from head to toe. “What d’you want her for?”

Katherine reminded herself that whatever happened in Los Angeles did not count and was in fact amusing. “I’m her new secretary,” she explained. “Dr. Einsam sent me.”

“Yeah, I thought so.” Glory paused only a moment but long enough for Katherine to think: suppose this weird person is Glory. Because if it is, and she knows, or suspects, about me and Iz, what kind of noise, violence, or even crime, is going to happen? “Only there’s so many cranks wandering around this town, you never know. Hi.” Glory suddenly extended a hand and a cold, brief, dazzling smile from the shadows of her disguise.