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"There's some people I bring out here like I order lawn furniture. There's other people I invite because I respect their experience and what's in their heads. Don't hurt my feelings," he said.
His guests arrived like actors who played only one role, their smiles welded in place, their eyes aglitter with the moment. They were people without accents or origins, as though they had lived on the edge of a party all their lives. But besides their good looks and their late-season suntans, their most singular common denominator was their carefree trust in the walled-in tropical opulence that surrounded them. They smoked dope by the pool, snorted lines off a mirror in the guest cottage, ate chicken and mayonnaise sandwiches from the caterer's tray, with never a sideways glance at gatemen who wore shoulder holsters or a thick-bodied, silent man in cutoffs who waxed an Oldsmobile in the driveway with such a mean energy that his jailhouse tattoos danced like snakes on his naked back.
Even Clete quickly fell into the ambience, his arms spread out on the tile trough in the deep end, his pale blue canvas hat low on his brow, a twenty-year-old girl hovering within the crook of his arm. Her mouth was red and cold from the whiskey sour she sipped from a glass in one hand, and she laughed at everything he said and balanced herself by cupping his shoulder whenever she started to float away from the pool's edge. I could see her knee rake against his thigh.
The air was becoming cooler now, and I treaded water to stay warm. It was impossible to get Cardo alone. He sat at the redwood table in a white terry cloth robe, one leg crossed on his knee, smoking a Pall Mall in a gold cigarette holder, while four of his guests sat around him and smiled brightly into his words. I hung from the diving board by one arm and began to think it was better to mark the day off.
"How do you like being in the life?" a voice said behind me.
She sat on the diving board that in a light green dress covered with tiny pink flowers. She had tucked her red hair up into a green beret, but one side of it had fallen down on her neck. Her lipstick was bright red, and she wore too much of it, but when she parted her mouth and looked directly at me, she disturbed me and made me keenly aware that there is no safety for the male in either age or pride.
"What's happening, Kim?" I said.
"What's happening with you, hotshot?"
"Like you say, enjoying the life. You don't want to swim?"
"I think I'll pass. Two nights ago they were screwing in here."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You heard me. On a rubber raft, with the lights on. What a bunch."
I lifted myself out of the pool and walked to the guest cottage to shower and dress. I heard her laugh behind me. When I came back out she was sitting on a cushioned, scrolled iron chair with her legs crossed. I sat down on the dry mat on the back edge of the diving board.
"You're a case," she said.
"How's that?" I said, looking toward the shallow end, where Tony was tapping a beach ball back and forth with two girls.
"You make me think of a cat that's trying to like sitting on a hot stove," she said.
"Where did you say you're from?"
"I didn't."
"I need to talk to Tony alone. It's hard to do."
"You're still out for the big score, huh, hotshot?"
"How about cutting me a little slack?"
"All you want, babe."
"Are you his girl?"
She looked away from me at the trees in the yard, her face cool and sculpted, her hair thick and dark red where it was pinned up on the back of her neck. She touched at an area between her teeth with her little fingernail, then glanced back into my face. Her eyes looked directly into mine, but they were impossible to read.
"What?" I asked her.
Still she didn't answer, and instead continued to stare into my face. I took a breath.
"I think I need to get something to eat," I said.
"If you want to see Tony alone, he'll be going up to the house soon to check on his little boy. He always does."
"His little boy?"
"It's the reason his wife's always taking off. She can't handle it."
