Джеймс Кейн - Mildred Pierce

“Anyway, we’re both on time.”

“Get in. Say, you look great.”

Going through Pasadena they decided it was time to tell names, and when he heard hers, he asked if she was related to Pierce Homes. When she said she was “married to them for a while,” he professed to be delighted, saying they were the worst homes ever built, as all the roofs leaked. She said that was nothing to how the treasury leaked, and they both laughed gaily. His name, Beragon, he had to spell for her before she got it straight, and as he put the accent on the last syllable she asked: “Is it French?”

“Spanish, or supposed to be. My great- great -grandfather was one of the original settlers — you know, the gay caballeros that gypped the Indians out of their land, the king out of his taxes, and then sold out to the Americans when Polk started annexing. But if you ask me, the old coot was really a wop. I can’t prove it, but I think the name was originally Bergoni. However, if he Spanished it up, it’s all right with me. Wop or spig, I wouldn’t trust either one as far as a snail can hop, so it doesn’t make much difference, one way or the other.”

“And what’s your first name?”

“Montgomery, believe it or not. But Monty’s not so bad.”

“Then, if I ever get to know you well enough to call you by your first name, I’ll call you that.”

“Is that a promise, Mrs. Pierce?”

“It is, Mr. Beragon.”

She was pleased at all these particulars about himself, for they told her he was giving her his real name, and not a phony invented for a somewhat irregular occasion. She settled back, lost a slightly uneasy feeling she had had, of being just a pick-up.

From Glendale to Lake Arrowhead, for any law-abiding citizen, is a trip of two hours and a half. But Mr. Beragon didn’t pay much attention to the law. The blue car climbed into the seventies and stayed there, and when they pulled up at the gate of the settlement it was only a little after two. They didn’t enter it, however. They took the little road to the right, and in a moment were stealing through great mountain pines that ladened the air with their smell. Presently they nosed down a rough dirt track, twisted through bushes that whacked the windshield, and pulled up with a jerk behind a little shingled shack. Mr. Beragon set his brake, started to get out, and then said, as though he had just thought of it: “Or would you prefer a bathhouse, around on the other side? I keep this shack here, but—”

“I think this is fine.”

He took her bag, and they went clumping around a boardwalk to the front. He unlocked the door, and they stepped into the hottest, stuffiest room that Mildred had ever been in.

“Wooh!”

He strode around, throwing up windows, going out back and opening doors, letting air circulate in a place that evidently hadn’t been opened for a month. While he was doing this she looked around. It was the living room of a rough mountain shack, with a rough board floor through whose chinks she could see the red earth beneath. Two or three Mexican rugs were scattered around, and the furniture was oak, with leather seats. However, there was a stone fireplace, and a horsy, masculine look to everything, so she half liked it. He reappeared presently, and said: “Well, are you hungry? We can get lunch at the tavern, or would you rather swim first?”

“Hungry? You just had breakfast!”

“Then we’ll swim.”

He picked up her bag and led the way to a small back room whose only furnishings were a cotton rug, a chair, and an iron bed, made up neatly with blankets. “If you can manage here, I’ll use the front room, and — see you in a few minutes.”

“I won’t be long.”

Both of them spoke with elaborate casualness, but she was no sooner alone than she pitched the bag on the bed and zipped it open even more quickly than she had zipped it shut. She was terrified he would reappear before she had finished dressing. Yet the possible consequences, as such, weren’t what frightened her. The heat, and now the piny breeze that was blowing in, filled her with a heavy, languorous, South Seas feeling that wanted to dawdle, to play, to get caught half dressed, without any shame whatever. But as he left her, she had caught a whiff of her hair, and it reeked of Archie’s bacon grease. It often did, she knew, specially when she was a day or so late at the beauty shop, but as to whether Wally noticed this, or liked it, or didn’t like it, she cared no more than she cared whether he dropped by or didn’t drop by. But that this man should notice it was a possibility that made her squirm. She had an obsession to get overboard, to get washed, before he came near her.

She slipped feverishly out of her clothes, put them on a chair, slipped on the suit. This was before the day of sarongs, and it was a simple maroon affair that made her look small, soft, and absurdly childish. She put on the rubber slippers, picked up the soap. Near her was a door that seemed to lead to some sort of small corridor. She opened it and peeped. Out back was a lattice, and beyond that the walk that circled the house. She pattered out and around, then ran straight down to the little jetty, with its small float. Clutching the soap in her hand, she dived off. The water was so cold she flinched, but she swam down until she was within a few inches of the stones she could see on bottom. Now safely out of sight, she ground the soap into her hair, swimming down with her free hand, holding her breath until her heart began to pound.

When she came up he was standing there, on the float, so she let the soap flutter to the bottom. “You were certainly in one hell of a hurry.”

“I was hot.”

“You forgot your cap.”

“I—? I must be a sight.”

“You look like a drowned rat.”

“If you could only see what you look like!”

At this pert remark he dived in, and there ensued an immemorial chase, with the immemorial squeals, kicks, and splashes. She retreated out of his reach, he followed with slow, lazy strokes; sometimes they stopped and floated, then resumed, as he thought of some new stratagem to catch her. After a while she tired, and began circling to get back to the float. Then he was in front of her, having swum under water to cut her off. Then she was caught, and the next thing she knew was being carried bodily into the shack. As she felt its warmth again, the dopey South Seas feeling returned. She felt limp and helpless, and barely had strength to kick the beach bag off the bed.

It was dark when they got up, and they drove over to the tavern for dinner. When they got back it was cold, and they decided to build a fire, of pine knots. But then they decided they hadn’t had enough to eat, and got in the car, and drove down to San Bernardino, for a steak, which she offered to broil. When they got back it was late, but they gathered pine knots by the car lights, and carried them in, and started them going. When they were glowing red she laid the steak on them, to burn it, and then held it with the tongs while it cooked. Then he got plates, and they cut hungrily into it, chewing it down like a pair of wolves. Then he helped her wash up. Then he asked solemnly if she was ready to go home, and she solemnly replied that she was. Then he carried her into the bedroom, and they shivered at the unexpected cold, and in five minutes were exclaiming at how good the blankets felt.

After a while they got to talking, and she learned that he was thirty-three years old, that he had attended the University of California at Los Angeles, that he lived in Pasadena, that his family lived there too, or at any rate his mother and sister, who seemed to be all the family he had. When she asked him what he did, he said: “Oh I don’t know. Fruit I guess. Oranges, grapefruit, something like that.”