“They don’t make cars like this anymore.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You should really have this seat replaced, Michael.”

  “I don’t have time to scout the junkyards.”

  “Junkyards? No, no. You must buy a new seat.”

  “They don’t make seats like this anymore either, Mr. Hyatt.”

  “A pity. The design is good and it’s actually quite comfortable except for the broken spring.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about it.”

  He stopped the car under the portico at the front door of the main house and the old man got out again.

  “It would be nice if you came in and talked to Kay, Michael.”

  “Many things would be nice if.” It would be nice if he didn’t have to tell Lorna he was leaving the ministry. It would be nice if she didn’t scream, didn’t remind him what a failure he’d been as a husband, provider, partner, comforter. It would be nice if he could just walk away without saying or hearing anything.

  “Kay will be grateful for your interest, Michael,” the old man said. “Very grateful.”

  If Kay was grateful she managed to conceal it nicely. She gave Mr. Hyatt a frown that sent him scurrying off down the hall. Then she turned the frown on Michael.

  “I’d ask you to come in but I don’t have time to talk right now.”

  “I’ll come in anyway if I may. It’s cold out here.”

  “It won’t be much warmer in here, I assure you. But all right. I can’t very well turn away a shivering minister, can I?”

  “On behalf of my fellow shiverers, thanks.”

  He followed her into what Kay called her tea room, a small area between the dining room and the kitchen. There was an ornate silver tea service on the teakwood table but the air smelled of coffee.

  Her frown had faded somewhat but her voice was still unfriendly. “Did Howard send you?”

  “No.”

  “You simply dropped in on the spur of the moment? I’m not buying that.”

  “I’m not selling. The reason I’m here is that Mr. Hyatt told me you received a phone call which upset you.”

  “Upset me? Do I look upset? I’m not one bloody bit upset. And I wish my father-in-law and Chizzy would stop listening in on conversations that are none of their business.”

  “Everything about you is their business, Kay,” Michael said bluntly. “So what happened and who’s coming here?”

  Instead of answering immediately she sat down at the teakwood table with the silver tea service in front of her like a shield. This was her place and taking it seemed to restore her poise.

  “It was a woman,” she said. “I’ve never met her but I know her name, Quinn, and her position in life.”

  “And what’s her position?”

  “Horizontal.”

  “I see.”

  “Rumor has it she’s not a professional, but a very gifted amateur.”

  “Mr. Hyatt overheard the name Ben. How does Ben fit into this?”

  “Snugly. She’s his current live-in. I don’t know her first name. Ben calls her Quinn and that’s how she identified herself on the phone.”

  “Why does she want to see you, Kay?”

  “I’m not sure. She sounded, not drunk exactly, but under the influence of something. She insisted on coming here to see me in person.”

  “Why?”

  “She has something to tell me about Ben.” Kay stared out the window with its view of the lily pond and the marble dolphins that kept the water fresh. “I think it concerns Annamay.”

  “Did she actually say so?”

  “She hinted at a close connection between them. Too close.”

  “She wouldn’t be more explicit?”

  “Not over the phone. . . . Annamay and Ben. The two names together always seemed so natural and wholesome.

  Now there’s this doubt in my mind. I keep thinking of incidents, trying to remember details, wondering if they were as innocent as they appeared.”

  “Quinn probably intends you to do just that. So don’t do it. Don’t speculate. Wait until you hear some facts if she has any. She may simply be a troubled woman, jealous of Ben’s friends and trying to alienate them.”

  “Not them,” Kay said. “Me. She thinks I’m the Other Woman in her love life.”

  “Do you want me to stay with you?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll be at home. Call me there if you need anything.”

  “Thank you, Michael.”

  They shook hands formally and briefly. She had regained control of herself and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be hearing from her.

  Chapter TEN

  Quinn always moved slowly, partly because it was her nature to take things easy and partly because she was six feet tall and not yet accustomed to a body that seemed to have outgrown her. When she tried to hurry she became clumsy and indecisive. Now, getting ready for her visit to Kay, she applied her makeup very carefully and then washed it all off again because it might give the wrong impression.

  None of her clothes seemed sober enough for the occasion so she borrowed a black turtleneck sweater from Ben’s closet. It was the proper color but too tight a fit and she was forced to cover it with the tan all-weather poncho she wore when she drove her little MG convertible at night or on windy days. Then she put on the only black skirt in her wardrobe, an ankle-length party skirt, and studied herself in the mirror.

  Two things spoiled the effect she was attempting to create. The shoes she wore were her usual high-heeled sandals, and her long red hair hung loose over her shoulders, making her look what Ben would call too available. Unable to find a ribbon to tie her hair back, she borrowed a shoelace from one of Ben’s oxfords. He’d be burned up when he discovered the sweater and the shoelace missing, but the confrontation would be brief She would simply remove the shoelace and the sweater, and for good measure the skirt, and after that everything would be fine.

  No, not this time.

  “Not this time.” She repeated the words aloud into the mirror. “The little beast will have to come crawling to me first and then maybe I’ll consider it.”

  She fingered the swelling on her left cheekbone, already beginning to turn blue. It was the first time Ben had hit her and she’d been too surprised to strike back. She could easily have done so. She was taller than he was and nearly as heavy and she’d had a good deal of fighting experience with her two older brothers. Instead of striking back she burst into tears and that proved to be the best defense of all. Ben ran out the front door as if he were escaping a live volcano.

  “He’ll go to a bar down the street, have a couple of martinis and then come crawling back here, full of sorries. Well, I won’t be here and I don’t like sorries.”

  After a final look in the full-length mirror she went into the living room. Here the stereo was still going full blast the way Ben had turned it so the neighbors wouldn’t hear any sounds of quarreling. She switched it off but the change in noise level was hardly noticeable. Traffic was heavy along the beachfront boulevard, the foghorns had begun to blow from the end of the breakwater and one of the oil platforms, gulls squawked and squabbled among themselves in the wake of fishing boats coming into the harbor with the day’s catch.

  She opened the front door at the same moment as Ben was about to enter. He held the key in his hand, pointed at her like a miniature knife. The martinis showed in his eyes and in his voice:

  “Well, well. Going somewhere? No, don’t tell me, let me guess. A Hallowe’en party and you’re dressed up as Miss Salvation Army Thrift Shop.”

  “Let me past.”

  “Not yet.” He pushed her back into the room and shut the door. “Where’s the party?”

  “I don’t think you’d like to know.”

  “I think I would.”

  “Has anyone ever told you you can’t hold your liquor?”

  “Never. A recent Gallup poll indicated that ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of the people never heard of me and wouldn’t give a damn anyway. So where’s the party?”

  “There is no—”

  “You can’t attend a party without an escort. I hereby offer my services.”

  “Where I’m going you wouldn’t be welcome.”

  “Home to mother?”

  “Not my mother.”

  “You’re too big to play cute. Whose mother?”

  “Figure it out.”

  He tried to put his hands on her shoulders as if he intended to shake the truth out of her but she sidestepped beyond his reach. “I don’t like what I’m figuring.”

  “Then it’s probably correct.”

  “Kay,” he said. “You’re going to see Kay.”

  She half expected him to strike her and this time she was ready to defend herself. But instead he walked over to the window. Its only view was the side wall of Longo’s Fish and Chip café next door. A delinquent with a can of spray paint had made an addition, FISH AND BULL CHIPS.

  He said, ‘That’s it, right? You’re going to see Kay.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m asking you not to do it.”

  “Really?”

  “All right, I’m begging you not to do it.”

  “That’s a little better but not good enough. Try bribery.”

  “Bribery?”

  “You know. Money.”

  The gas heater in the room hadn’t been turned on yet, and even under the wool turtleneck and the poncho and long skirt Quinn was shivering with cold. But Ben’s face was sunburn-pink and sweat glistened across his forehead. She felt suddenly quite sorry for him and would have melted in his arms if he’d said the right thing. He didn’t. Anyway, business was business.

  He said, “How much do you want?”

  “Half.”

  “Half of what?”

  “If we were married I’d get half of everything under community-property laws, wouldn’t I? And we’re as good as married already, aren’t we?” She knew she was on the wrong track but she couldn’t seem to get off it or to brake herself to a stop. “I feel like your wife, Ben. I feel like we’ve been married three and a half months and this is our very first quarrel. And everything will turn out all right because we love each other. . . . Don’t we?”

  He stared at her without speaking.

  “Me feeling married to you already, maybe that sounds silly to you.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t think it’s silly?”

  “No. I think it’s incredibly preposterously stupid and exactly what I’d expect from you.”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like—”

  “Married. Jeez, what a laugh. You’re a slut, a tramp who walked in off the street.”

  “That’s a lie. You gave me a ride home from the Cielo theater when my car wouldn’t start.”

  “Everything else started. You moved in the same night.”

  “It was at least a week later.”

  “Anyway, you turned out to be a pretty fair screw. Not great, but pretty fair.”

  “How would you know, you goddam pervert?”

  He came toward her with his fists clenched but she ran out the door and down the narrow alley between the apartment building and Longo’s Fish and Chip café.

  Her little convertible was parked in one of the slots reserved for the café patrons. Mr. Longo himself hurried out the rear door as she was getting into the car.

  He was angry. “I want you should stop parking in my customer slots.”

  “I’ve only been there fifteen minutes.”

  “Two hours. I timed you. And never once you bought any fish and chips either.”

  “Lay off, will you? I got problems.”

  “I got customers.” Mr. Longo wiped his forehead and neck with his greasy apron. “You young chicks think all you got to do is shake your boobs at any man and right away he gives you what you want. Lemme tell you, I seen plenty of boobs in my life and ain’t one of them ever made me compromise my principles, which is business before pleasure.”

  “Listen, my boyfriend’s after me to beat me up. Please let me out of here, will you? Please?”

  “You gonna come in once in a while, buy some chips?”

  “Sure, sure. Every day.” He stepped back and she put the key in the ignition and revved the motor up. Now go fry your balls, you old goat.

  Quinn had seen the house only once before, several nights previously. It was late and she and Ben had been drinking. The very size of the house had intimidated her and she wanted to turn around and go home. But Ben kept saying, “Come on, baby,” in the half coaxing, half bullying tone she usually responded to.

  “I’m scared, Benjie. What if the dogs—”

  ‘They won’t bother us. They sleep in the kitchen at the rear of the house.”

  “My feet hurt.”

  “Take your shoes off.”

  “We should have brought the Porsche up.”

  “Too noisy.”

  So the Porsche remained on the street below.

  Ben carried her shoes for her while she walked barefoot on the grass alongside the driveway. The grass was cold and wet and almost immediately she began to shiver.

  Ben was very considerate. “Here, take my coat.”

  “Then you’ll be cold.”

  “No. I’m burning up.”

  She knew from the way he put his coat around her shoulders that he was going to make love to her in the child’s playhouse that he called the palace.

  She turned her head so her cheek brushed the back of his hand. “The bed will be too small, won’t it?”

  “If we can make it in the Porsche we can make it anywhere.”

  She giggled and hung on to his arm and everything seemed fun as it always did when Ben was in a good mood.

  It didn’t last. Even before they reached the palace she sensed that his excitement was different this time, hardly connected with her at all.

  There was a full moon and she could see the palace door quite clearly, carved with brightly painted figures, a little girl sitting on a throne with her hand on the head of a black dog, a king and queen dancing, a court jester, a tree with golden apples.

  “Someone went to a lot of trouble for an ordinary playhouse.”

  “Not someone. Me. And it’s not an ordinary playhouse. It’s the palace of a princess.”

  “Did you do all that carving?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you.”

  Ben opened the door and switched on an overhead light and a lamp. “Come in.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You said you did.”

  “I was sort of drunk.”

  “This is a hell of a time to sober up.”

  “I wasn’t as drunk as you to begin with.”

  “Jesus Christ, are we going to stand here arguing about which one of us was drunker?” He pulled her into the room and kicked the door shut.

  Everything in the palace was built to scale, not for a child as young as Annamay, but for a rather small adult. Quinn could stand up straight but her head grazed the ceiling and she stooped instinctively the way she used to when she first started to grow faster than her peers.

  “Why did you make the ceiling so low?”

  “To remind adults that this is not their place, it belongs to the princess and her duke.”

  “You’re kind of crazy, aren’t you?”

  “Not kind of. Very.”

  “I don’t believe it. I read in a magazine once that people who are really crazy don’t know it.”

  “I’m an exception.”

  “Stop talking like that. You’re making me nervous.”

  “All grown-ups are supposed to feel nervous in the palace. It’s not their place.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  “I belong,” he said. “I belong.”

  The tone of his voice, the musty smell in the room, the threatening touch of the ceiling against her head increased her anxiety. Trying not to show it she sat down on the small bird-and-flower-print davenport. Ben stood looking down at her frowning, her sandals still in his hand.

  “God, you have big feet.”

  “What of it?”

  “They’re as big as mine.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “Want to bet?”

  He sat down beside her on the davenport, slipped off the leather moccasins he was wearing and put on the high-heeled sandals. His hands shook as he buckled the straps and stood up.

  “See? They fit exactly. You lose.”

  “I didn’t bet. Now give me back my shoes.”

  He pretended not to hear her. He was walking around the room, not awkwardly the way men in drag did on television or in the movies, but quite gracefully and naturally as if he’d been doing it all his life.

  She watched him, first in disbelief, then in anger. “What are you, some kind of freako? Give me back my shoes. I want to go home.”

  “Why? The fun’s only beginning.”

  “I don’t think this is fun, watching some guy prance around in women’s shoes.”

  “It’s a game.”

  “I don’t care. I hate it.”

  “Come on, baby, dance with me.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Okay, I’ll dance with the kiddies.” He picked up the two dolls from the bunk bed, Marietta with her half-bald head and Luella Lu with her glued-in eye. Holding them close against his chest he began circling the room. “They’re Annamay’s children so of course they love dancing as she did. The princess and I often danced. Round and round, just like this. Round and round—-”

  When he passed the davenport she reached out with one foot and caught him on the shin. He stumbled and fell to the floor, the dolls flying out of his arms like caged birds unexpectedly released. He winced as he picked himself up, holding his left elbow with his right hand.

  “You tripped me, you bitch.”

  “Open the door and let me out of here or I’ll scream.”

  “Chances are you’re a good screamer. Right?”

  “The best.”

  “Give us a sample.”

  “If I scream your fancy friends will come running and want to know why you busted into their kid’s playhouse.”

  “It’s not a playhouse. It’s real, it’s a real palace.”

  “This kinky stuff makes me sick. Let me out before I throw up all over the royal rug.”

 

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