“You’re not going to hurt me, are you?” Beneath the long lashes the eyes peered up at the bright ones above. “Are you?” There was the palest color of something in the query, as if hurting him were not totally beyond question, or even beyond desire. Instead of striking, Arco grabbed at the gold neck chain and yanked; Willie’s torso bent forward under the strain. Judee pressed forward, weird giggling sounds coming from around the small fist she had doubled up at her mouth. Arco leaned over and used both hands to snap the chain, catching the medals and keys as they fell. Sorting them, he dashed back across the room to the chapel, where he banged through the gate and began fitting the keys at the locks of the wooden coffer on the altar.
“No—” Willie had half turned, his arm raised in supplication. Bill came from behind and restrained him until Arco rushed cursing from the chapel, struggling under the weight of the box. Eluding Bill, Willie staggered up and grabbed at Arco as he came. “Give me that.” Arco shoved him away and set the opened box on the table.
“There’s no mirror in here. What the fuck is this anyway?” He held a small white object, perhaps three inches long. He grabbed Willie’s arm and shoved the object under his face. “What is it?”
“A … holy object.” Clutching the draperies about him, Willie struggled forward. “Give it to me—”
“Lemme see.” Judee took the thing from Arco and examined it. “Looks like some kind of bone.”
“Yes, a bone.” Willie reached out to her. “Please? Let me have it?” Arco knocked his hand away and seized the object from Judee; Willie started whimpering. “It’s a bone from the foot of Saint Trebonius. A holy relic. You shouldn’t touch it, it’s holy, holy—”
“Shit!” Arco flung it away and Willie scrabbled across the tiles to retrieve it. He cupped it in his hand, crooning and pressing it to his chest. “Mama … ?” The mocking Bankhead laugh broke out once more as he rose and began the bump-and-grind step again, lurching about the room. “‘My mama done tol’ mee’—Bah-hah-hah-hah-hah, dahlings, you see, it’s all a joke, just a joke.”
Arco advanced on him. “What d’you mean—a joke?”
“’S a fake—one of Bee’s ter-rific ideas, dahling.” He sauntered away, reverting to his natural voice. “I don’t even know if it came from a foot, let alone Saint … whoever.” He pointed toward the chapel. “Everything’s fake. Cedars of Lebanon? Not at all. A man from the studio prop department made that cross. California cypress, not cedar. No Knight of Malta. Box is a fake, too. No monks of Mont Saint Michel. Bible—no Cardinal Richelieu. Fake, see? Movie props; make-believe. Bee—busy bee—she did th’ embroidery. No nuns of Bruges. It’s a movie set. And the painting. Not Renaissance, not Quattrocento, not a bit of Quattrocento. Done by a painter in Laguna, friend of Bee’s. Laguna Lil, see? It’s all a joke, see, just a joke. Bee’s joke.” He was laughing, then harder, clutching himself, laughing so he couldn’t stop; it rose up out of him in squalls of high-pitched mirth. Holding his stomach, he tumbled back on a sofa. “Joke—see the joke?”
Arco struck him. Three violent blows, but punctuated by precise pauses between, lifting the hand and holding it a moment, watching, and striking again. Blood began to run. The dogs cowered, then fled. Willie stared wildly up at him, waiting each time for the next blow. Arco was coolly, almost indifferently, angry; it was as if the scene had been rehearsed between them. Willie slid from the sofa to the floor and knelt there. Arco raised his foot, paused; Willie waited, was toppled backward by the blow planted on his chest. He clasped himself, rolling sideways; there was blood on the tiles. Judee was screaming and laughing, inane sounds coming in gurgles from her throat. Willie crawled, the skirts of the white gown draping themselves along his thin form in graceful, bloodied folds. He stumbled to his feet, sweeping the clothes around him in a whimsical parody of maidenly modesty, and the draperies rippled and whispered as he fled.
It became an absurd, almost comical chase. Out through the doors he went, across the lanai, to the pool. He would run, trailing his ridiculous costume, his features grotesque in their make-up, laughing, sobbing, turning, stopping, waiting. His breath came fast, his body trembled with excitement. The others ran after him, shouting, laughing, crying out, past the diving board, the broken fountain, with cries and pantings, more stops, waits, opposing moves around a chaise, until Willie collapsed again and Arco was on him, yanking his head up so his neck arched like a bow.
“Punish you.” Hot, fierce, demanding. Willie’s eyes gleamed, apprehensive yet enticed.
“Punish, how?”
Arco whistled on his fingers, sharp urgent blasts, until the others came. It had all become a game, of course, they were laughing or appeared to be, Judee was tickling Willie’s ribs and making him scream with mirth, then pain, then he was being lifted vertically to his feet, and as he started to fold again, with a quick neat movement Bill bent beneath him, caught him on his shoulder like a potato sack, and carried him with giant strides back into the house. They brought him across the game room to the doors of the chapel—laughing, everyone was laughing—and inside. No, Willie cried out, laughing and gasping, too, when he saw what the joke had become; let him go now, he cried out, it was enough, but no, it wasn’t, there was something else yet at hand, something more to be done, and then, suddenly, no one was laughing at all.
Out of darkness, into light—a little. From somewhere, far, far away, he could hear the clock striking; counted the notes. It was two; or he thought it was. He found it strange, almost dreamlike, coming out of that place where he had been, the void where seemingly he had floated as though above the earth, not soaring, but hovering. The promise of nightmare, but happily he had awakened before … The light struck him from above, hitting him across the plane of his forehead and bare shoulders. Bright, hot light stung his eyes, but through the glare he could see into shadows where figures moved, silent, devious, nefariously occupied. His body hurt; he did not mind it. His jaw ached; he didn’t mind that either. His hands, feet, felt numb, but somehow even this seemed fitting. Everything as it had come about seemed to him oddly fitting. Strange, but where he was was where he had wanted to be. He had imagined himself here, had wondered what it might be like, what feelings he would experience, what thoughts and emotions. Now he was here, in pain, but with it a suffusing tranquility.
Someone giggled. Seated cross-legged below him, leaning across her knees, the girl looked up with her soft, bulgy eyes, staring, not moving. Oh, her expression said, oh, he was a funny sight.
“Wha’? Wha’?” he murmured, his mind cloudy again.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said. “How’re ya? You okay?” He nodded, coughed, swallowed. From out there in the darkness he heard the sound of booted feet moving; again a shadow passed. The girl turned.
“He’s come to.”
The feet sounded louder; a figure appeared in the doorway. He recognized it as Bill, or something that seemed like Bill.
Uncomprehendingly, Willie looked first at his right hand, then at his left, bound to the wooden crosspiece with black tape. Wound about his middle, crisscrossed over his chest, securing his torso to the upright column was some sort of plastic lamp cord. His knees were bent, his ankles also taped. Below his feet was the altar with its embroidered cloth. He lifted his eyes again, and through the open chapel doors, across the white and black squares, above the urn on the mantel he saw the portrait.
The famous Bee smile.
Then Arco came.
From his position of preeminence, Willie looked down on him. The younger man returned his gaze, his eyes no longer sparkling; through Willie’s blur their light seemed dimmed, in their vaguely querying expression. They regarded one another silently for some moments. Willie laughed weakly; after all, it was only a joke. Yet between them across the sharply angled space, a little more than a dozen feet, there hung a question; unspoken, unanswered.
“It’s Gethsemane time, gang.” Arco made a clownish leer, pantomiming a microphone and speaking into it like Walter Cronkite. “
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are here high atop Golgotha, overlooking the holy city of Jerusalem. Let me tell you, it’s quite a hike up here, folks, but the view is magnificent. If you look to your left you can see the Wailing Wall, and just over there is Pilate, washing his hands. As you see, he’s using Camay, and afterward, Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion. And just there is dear Mary Magdalene, on a coffeebreak with the Virgin Mary. And here, you lucky people, on the cross, you see before you Mary’s son, and here’s the son’s naughty drag, for which we will not cast lots.” He tossed up the draperies which had been stripped from Willie’s body, leaving him naked, except for his undershorts, white tricot boxers, with a coronet embroidered on the thigh; his papal crest.
“How’s it going, old-timer?” Arco asked good-naturedly, stepping fully into the light.
Willie shook his head, croaked out four words. “Get me down now.”
“Not yet”
“Wha’ we waiting for?”
“For you to tell.”
“Tell. Tell what?”
“Where’s the safe, Willie?”
“Safe …” He remembered something about the safe.
“The mirror’s in it,” Arco explained. “We want it.”
Willie’s shoulders shook as he laughed again. “Mirror? You … want … mirror?”
“We got a guy. He’ll pay five g’s for it.”
“Worth more.”
“Doesn’t matter—it’s enough to get us where we’re going.”
“Hula skirts? Tropical shores? Won’t get you to Redondo Beach. Arms are going to sleep.”
Arco’s voice was soft, gentle even. “Where is it, Willie?”
He closed his eyes; lights danced behind the lids. He rested his head back. “Can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Suit yourself.”
“Willie, you can come down or stay up there, but if you come down you’ve got to tell first.”
“Mean … I have a choice?”
“That’s what I mean. What it’s all about—everything’s a choice. Up or down.”
“Up.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Metaphor?”
“Hm?”
“This … one of your … living metaphors?”
“If you like.”
“I don’t.” He watched the figure below. “Significance escapes me. Who’m I s’posed to be? Jesus? That what you have in mind?”
“Whatever turns you on, babe.”
Willie choked, gagged, hiccupped.
“He needs a drink,” Judee said.
“Get him one,” Arco ordered. Judee clopped away on her wooden shoes, Arco following.
Bill paused in the doorway. “You better tell him, Willie.”
Willie chuckled; the joke was outrageous. He shook his head again.
Bill said, “He’s going to hurt you, Willie.” He, too, went away.
Judee came back with a glass of water and ice. She dragged over a bench to stand on and held the glass to his lips. He drank greedily. She rubbed an ice cube on his forehead.
“Wha’s happening?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “I’m pretty ripped, sweetie. You better do what he says, though.” Willie was laughing again; she didn’t understand why. He started to tell her, then decided not to. He emptied the glass and she took it away. He held his breath as she had suggested, and the hiccups subsided. He felt more sober. He closed his eyes, wondering how long they would leave him there before they let him down. His wrists hurt, the circulation was stopping in his legs. His vision blurred, then focused, blurred again. Beyond the light, the uprights of the door seemed to bend and waver like reflections on water. Someone moved in front of the fireplace, flames leaping behind. Arco was carrying something to the fireplace. Willie blinked, felt a chill when awareness seeped in on his dazed state.
“Bad cess to you, Arco,” he called defiantly through the open doorway.
Arco was dropping manuscript pages, one by one, onto the burning logs.
“You can stop it, Willie,” Arco returned.
Willie clamped his mouth shut, staring unbelievingly as page after page was fed to the flames. Then Arco began dumping in whole sections; smoke poured out into the room.
“Ge’Italiani sono grandi amanti della bellezza, non è vero?” Willie called.
“Vero.” Arco’s hand moved methodically, transferring the pages from the crook of his arm to the fire.
“Liar!”
“Sì, caro.” The destruction went on.
What did it matter? Willie thought. A lot of silly stories. It was true, he could stop it, could be taken down. He could tell them where the safe was, let them have the mirror, get them out of the house. His eye went from the flames to the gleaming portrait. “Mama,” he said. He did not smile back at her. Out of the vague swarm of thoughts that came to him—and there were few he seemed able to hold on to—there was one: in all his life he had never risked anything, chanced anything, dared anything. Bee had made the decisions, forced the hands, seen to the arrangements, ruled the roost. He had been a kind of wind-up doll with a little steel key in his back: bow, move, twirl, sing, dance, amuse. Hardly a life; hardly a man. He sorrowed for both, but not for his autobiography. Salad Days, when he was young and green. He was older, wiser, tireder now.
He would not tell.
In they went, page after page. Judee dragged up a chair and sat watching, giggling moronically as she recited, “‘Little Willie in the best of sashes fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes …’” Willie closed his eyes, but could not keep them shut; the sight was too fascinating. The ruin of the manuscript took time, the hearth blazed, flames roared in the chimney. Then at last it was done. Arco’s hands were empty. He dusted them in a neat, decisive gesture, and looked across the room to the cross.
“‘Later on the room grew chilly, but nobody thought to poke up Willie,’” Arco said. He did not laugh. Willie eyed him silently as he came and stood in the doorway. “You ready to tell now?” Willie closed his eyes again, wilted against the cross. Arco left.
When Willie reopened his eyes he could scarcely believe the sight that presented itself. “No—no—” A cry escaped him before he could prevent it.
“What about this?” Arco was asking sardonically. “Is this a fake, too? This another of your jokes?”
“They’re her ashes!”
Arco had lifted the gold urn from the mantel and was cradling it in one arm; in his other hand was the lid, which he wrenched away. It rolled, then fell flat with diminishing metallic reverberations on the tiles. “Maybe it’s just cigar ashes. Maybe it’s not Mama at all.” He brought forth a handful of gray matter and held it palm up before him. Drifting currents lifted a small puff and they sifted to the floor. Then he tossed the rest in a flurry up in the air.
“In God’s name—it’s my mother!”
Arco was scooping out the ashes with his fingers and letting them sift across the yellow velvet of a chair, across the Marion Davies sofas, across the coffee table. Then he stepped to Judee and drew an ashy X on her forehead and made the sign of the cross.
“Pox vobiscum. That’s Latin, Willie,” he called, advancing back to the chapel. “Where’s it at? Tell, or there won’t be anything left of Mama come the dawn.”
Willie shook his head. “No.”
“It’s your funeral. Sorry, I mean your mother’s. To Bee or not to Bee, all that crap.” He came in through the gate and stood at the altar, where he tilted the urn, letting the ashes pour from the inverted mouth. When the vessel was empty, he raised it over his head and hurled it against the stained-glass window. The lead mullions gave way, and the glass shattered in an explosion of color. Willie moaned and averted his head.
“Watch me, Willie.” Arco’s face was paler than ever as he stood below, fists planted defiantly on his hips. Then an arm shot out, he pointed upward, the blood surging back into his face in a new outburst of fury. “Look, you sick prick, I know you. I know
you! I’ve seen you everywhere. In every city I’ve been in I’ve seen you and your stinking kind, with your goddamn fancy cars and your goddamn fancy jewelry and your goddamn fancy women. You’ve got it all—you think. But you listen to me—you’re not going to keep it all, you hear? None of you people!”
“We earned it—”
Arco raised his hand and slammed it down on the altar. “I don’t care who earned what! You’ve got it! You got your share and you got my share and his and hers”—pointing at Judee and Bill—“and we want ours. That’s what we came for. To get ours.”
“Then … it wasn’t just … ? You had it all figured out.”
“I got everything figured out.” He moved closer; his words spilled out in a harsh rush. “Listen, old man, I’ll do things to you. I’ll frighten you. I’ll hurt you. You understand? Hear me? Hear me?”
On the cross, Willie’s body trembled. Spittle had gathered in the corners of his mouth. He favored Arco with a thin, mocking smile, then, in an effort at lightness, said, “Somebody bring me a drink. Scotch, not too much ice.”
“Sure thing.” Arco stalked rapidly from the room, going first to the bar for the Scotch bottle, then to the table for Willie’s glass. “Here’s ice, Willie.” He picked up one of the crystal cubes and dropped it in the glass, then another. He poured Scotch over them and held it out. “Here’s to crime, Willie.” He raised the glass over the table, then released his fingers. The heavy double-old-fashioned glass slipped, struck the tabletop, and shattered. He circled the table, taking up one crystal object after another and letting it drop—obelisks, eggs, animals, cigarette box, ashtrays. He turned and grabbed up another glass and sent it crashing against one of the mirrored screens. The cockatoo screamed in its cage, the dogs scampered under the piano.