“Guess it didn't make any difference to his love life with that waitress of yours.” Dallie took another swallow. “Women are funny ‘bout things like that. Take that lady we met last year in San Diego after the Andy Williams—”
“Stop it!” Francesca cried, unable to hold back her outcry. “Are you so callous that you don't have the simple decency to ask me if I'm all right? That was a barroom brawl back there! Don't you realize that I could have been killed?”
“Probably not,” Dallie said. “Somebody most likely would've put a stop to it.”
She drew back her hand and hit his arm as hard as she could.
“Ouch.” He rubbed the spot she had struck.
“Did she just hit you?” Skeet inquired indignantly.
“Yeah.”
“You gonna hit her back?”
“I'm thinking.”
“I would if I was you.”
“I know you would.” He looked at her and his eyes darkened. “I would, too, if I thought she was going to be part of my life for any longer than about the next two and a half minutes.”
She stared at him, wishing she could take back her impulsive blow, unable to believe what she'd just heard. “Exactly what are you saying?” she demanded.
Skeet sped through a yellow light. “How far is it to the airport from here?”
“Clear across town.” Dallie leaned forward and clasped his hand over the back of the seat. “In case you weren't paying attention earlier, the motel's up another light and down a block.”
Skeet stepped down on the accelerator and the Riviera shot forward, throwing Francesca back against the seat. She glared at Dallie, trying to shame him into apologizing so she could magnanimously forgive him. She waited the rest of the way to the motel.
They turned into the well-lit parking lot, and Skeet swung around to the side, stopping in front of a line of brightly painted metal doors stamped with black numbers. He shut off the ignition, and then he and Dallie climbed out. She watched incredulously as first one car door slammed and then the other.
“See you in the morning, Dallie.”
“See you, Skeet.”
She leaped out after them, her case clutched in her hand, trying unsuccessfully to hold her blouse closed. “Dallie!”
He pulled a room key from the pocket of his jeans and turned. Greige silk slithered through her fingers as she closed the car door. Couldn't he see how helpless she was? How much she needed him? “You have to help me,” she said, staring at him with eyes so pitifully large they seemed to eat up her small face. “I put my life in jeopardy going to that bar just to find you.”
He looked at her breasts and the ecru silk bra. Then he pulled his faded navy T-shirt over his head and tossed it to her. “Here's the shirt off my back, honey. Don't ask for anything more.”
She watched incredulously as he walked into his motel room and shut the door—shut the door in her face! The panic that had been building inside her throughout the day burst free, flooding every part of her body. She had never experienced such fear, she had no way of coping with it, and so she converted it into something she understood—a burning flare of red-hot anger. No one treated her like this! No one! She'd make him deal with her! She'd make him pay!
She dashed to his door and banged her case against it, hitting it once, twice, wishing it were his horrid, ugly face. She kicked at it, cursed it, let her anger detonate, let it blaze bright and righteous in one never-to-be-forgotten display of the temper that had made her a legend.
The door swung open and he stood on the other side, his chest bare and his ugly face scowling at her. She'd show him a scowl! She'd show him that he'd never even imagined what a scowl looked like! “You bastard!” She shot past him and flung her case across the room, where it shattered the television screen in a satisfying explosion of glass. “You depraved, moronic bastard!” She kicked over a chair. “You callous son of a bitch!” She upended his suitcase.
And then she let herself go.
Screaming out insults and accusations, she tossed ashtrays and pillows, threw lamps, and pulled the drawers from the desk. Every slight she had suffered in the past twenty-four hours, every indignity, came to the surface—the pink dress, the Blue Choctaw, the peach eye shadow.... She punished Chloe for dying, Nicky for deserting her; she assaulted Lew Steiner, attacked Lloyd Byron, mutilated Miranda Gwynwyck, and most of all, she annihilated Dallie Beaudine. Dallie, the most beautiful man she had ever met, the only man who wasn't impressed by her, the only man who'd ever slammed a door in her face.
Dallie watched for a moment, his hands planted on his hips. A can of shaving cream flew past him and hit the mirror. “Unbelievable,” he muttered. He stuck his head out the door. “Skeet! Come over here. You got to see this.”
Skeet was already on his way. “What's going on? It sounds like—” He stopped dead in the open doorway, staring at the destruction taking place in front of him. “Why is she doin’ that?”
“Damned if I know.” Dallie ducked a flying copy of the Greater New Orleans telephone directory. “Damnedest thing I ever saw in my life.”
“Maybe she thinks she's a rock star. Hey, Dallie! She's goin’ for your three-wood!”
Dallie moved like the athlete he was, and in two long strides he had her.
Francesca felt herself being upended. For a moment her legs hung free, and then something hard jabbed into her stomach as she felt herself being tossed over his shoulder. “Put me down! Put me down, you bastard!”
“Not hardly. That's the best three-wood I ever owned.”
They began to move. She screamed as he carried her outside, his shoulder pushing into her stomach, his arm clamped around the backs of her knees. She heard voices and she was dimly aware of doors opening and bathrobed bodies peering out.
“I never saw a woman so scared of a little old mouse in all my life,” Dallie called out.
She banged her fists against his bare back. “I'll have you arrested!” she screamed. “I'll sue you! Bastard! I'll sue you for every penny—” He veered sharply to the right. She saw a wrought-iron fence, a gate, underwater lights—
“No!” She let out a bloodcurdling scream as he pitched her into the very deepest part of the motel swimming pool.
Chapter
10
Skeet walked up next to Dallie, and the two men stood on the edge of the pool watching her. Finally Skeet made an observation. “She's not coming up real fast.”
Dallie tucked one thumb into the pocket of his jeans. “Doesn't look like she can swim. I should've figured.”
Skeet turned to him. “Did you hear the peculiar way she says ‘bastard’? Like ‘bah-stud.’ I can't say it the way she does. Real peculiar.”
“Yeah. That fancy accent of hers sure does manage to screw up good American cusswords.”
The splashing in the pool gradually began to slow down. “You gonna jump in and save her any time in the next century?” Skeet inquired.
“Suppose I'd better. Unless you'd consider doing it.”
“Hell, no. I'm going to bed.”
Skeet turned to walk out the gate, and Dallie sat down on the edge of a lounge chair to pull off his boots. He watched for a moment to see how much struggle she had left, and when he judged the time to be about right, he wandered over to the edge and dived in.
Francesca had just realized how much she didn't want to die. Despite the movie, her poverty, the loss of all her possessions, she was too young. Her whole life stretched before her. But as the awful weight of the water pressed down on her, she understood that it was happening. Her lungs burned and her limbs no longer responded to any command. She was dying, and she hadn't even lived yet.
Suddenly something caught her around the chest and began dragging her upward, holding her close, not letting her go, pulling her to the surface, saving her! Her head burst through the water and her lungs grabbed the air. She sucked it in, coughing and choking, grabbing at the arms around her for fear they would let her go, sobbing and cryin
g with the pure joy of still being alive.
Without quite being aware how it had happened, she found herself being pulled up on the deck, the last shreds of her greige silk blouse staying in the water. But even when she felt the solid concrete surface beneath her, she wouldn't let Dallie go.
When she could finally speak, her words came out in small choked gasps. “I'll never forgive you... I hate you....” She clung to his body, painted herself on his bare chest, threw her arms around his shoulders, held him as tight as she had ever held anything in her life. “I hate you,” she choked out. “Don't let me go.”
“You really did get shook up there, didn't you, Francie?”
But she was beyond replying. All she could do was hold on for dear life. She held on to him as he carried her back into the motel room, held on to him while he talked to the motel manager who was waiting for them, held on as he pulled her case from the rubble, fumbled through it, and carried her to another room.
He leaned over to lay her on the bed. “You can sleep here for the—”
“No!” The now-familiar wave of panic returned.
He tried to pry her arms from his neck. “Aw, come on, Francie, it's almost two in the morning. I want to get at least a few hours’ sleep before I have to wake up.”
“No, Dallie!” She was crying now, gazing straight into those Newman-blue eyes and crying her heart out. “Don't leave me. I know you'll drive away if I let you go. I'll wake up tomorrow and you'll be gone and I won't know what to do.”
“I won't drive away until I talk to you,” he said finally, pulling her arms free.
“Promise?”
He pulled off the sodden Bottega Veneta sandals, which had miraculously stayed on her feet, and pitched them to the floor, along with the dry T-shirt he'd brought with him. “Yeah, I promise.”
Even though he'd given his word, he sounded reluctant, and she made a small inarticulate sound of protest as he went out the door. Didn't she promise all sorts of things and then promptly forget about them? How did she know he wouldn't do the same? “Dallie?”
But he was gone.
Somewhere she found the energy to pull off her wet jeans and underwear, letting them fall in a heap beside the bed before she slid under the covers. She pushed her wet head into the pillow, closed her eyes, and in the instant before she fell asleep, wondered whether she might not have been better off if Dallie had left her on the bottom of the swimming pool.
Her sleep was deep and hard, but she still jolted awake barely four hours later when the first trickle of light seeped through the heavy draperies. Throwing off the covers, she jumped unsteadily from the bed and stumbled naked toward the window, every muscle in her body aching. Only after she'd pushed back the drapery and looked outside at the dreary, rain-soaked day did her stomach steady. The Riviera was still there.
Her heartbeat resumed its normal rhythm, and she slowly made her way toward the mirror, instinctively doing what she had done every morning of her life for as long as she could remember, greeting her reflection to assure herself that the world had not changed during the night, that it still orbited in a predestined pattern around the sun of her own beauty.
She let out a strangled cry of despair.
If she'd had more sleep, she might have handled the shock better, but as it was, she could barely comprehend what she saw. Her beautiful hair hung in tangled mats around her face, a long scratch marred the graceful curve of her neck, bruises had popped out on her flesh, and her bottom lip—her perfect bottom lip—was puffed up like a pastry shell.
Panic-stricken, she rushed to her case and inventoried her remaining possessions: a travel-size bottle of René Garraud bath gel, toothpaste (no sign of a toothbrush), three lipsticks, her peach eye shadow, and the useless dispenser of birth control pills Cissy's maid had packed. Her handbag yielded up two shades of blusher, her lizard-skin wallet, and an atomizer of Femme. Those, along with the faded navy T-shirt Dallie had thrown at her the night before and the small pile of soggy clothes on the floor, were her possessions... all she had left in the world.
The enormity of her losses was too devastating to comprehend, so she rushed to the shower where she did as much as she could with a brown bottle of motel shampoo. She then used the few cosmetics she had left to try to reconstruct the person she'd been. After pulling on her uncomfortably soggy jeans and struggling into her wet sandals, she spritzed Femme under her arms and then slid on Dallie's T-shirt. She looked down at the word written in white on her left breast and wondered what an AGGIES was. Another mystery, another unknown to make her feel like an intruder in a strange land. Why had she never felt like this in New York? Without shutting her eyes, she could see herself rushing along Fifth Avenue, dining at La Caravelle, walking through the lobby of the Pierre, and the more she thought about the world she'd left behind, the more disconnected she felt from the world she'd entered. A knock sounded, and she quickly combed her hair with her fingers, not quite daring to risk another peek in the mirror.
Dallie stood leaning against the door frame wearing a sky blue windbreaker beaded with rainwater and bleached-out jeans that had a frayed hole at the side of one knee. His hair was damp and curled up at the ends. Dishwater blond, she thought disparagingly, not true blond. And he needed a really good cut. He also needed a new wardrobe. His shoulders pulled at the seams of his jacket; his jeans would have disgraced a Calcutta beggar.
It was no use. No matter how clearly she saw his flaws, no matter how much she needed to reduce him to the ordinary in her own eyes, he was still the most impossibly gorgeous man she had ever seen.
He leaned one hand against the door frame and looked down at her. “Francie, ever since last night, I've been trying to make it obvious to you in as many ways as I could that I don't want to hear your story, but since you're hell-bent on telling it and since I'm getting pretty close to desperate to get rid of you, let's do it right now.” With that, he walked into her room, slumped down in a straight-backed chair, and put his boots up on the edge of the desk. “You owe me someplace in the neighborhood of two hundred bucks.”
“Two hundred—”
“You pretty well trashed that room last night.” He leaned back in the chair until only the rear legs were on the floor. “A television, two lamps, a few craters in the Sheetrock, a five-by-four picture window. The total came to five hundred sixty dollars, and that was only because I promised the manager I'd play eighteen holes with him the next time I come through. There only seemed to be a little over three hundred in your wallet—not enough to take care of all that.”
“My wallet?” She tore at the latches of her case. “You got into my wallet! How could you do something like that? That's my property. You should never have—” By the time she'd pulled her wallet from her purse, the palms of her hands were as clammy as her jeans. She opened it and gazed inside. When she could finally speak, her voice was barely a whisper. “It's empty. You've taken all my money.”
“Bills like that have to be settled real quick unless you want to catch the attention of the local gendarmes. “
She sagged down on the end of the bed, her sense of loss so overwhelming that her body seemed to have gone numb. She had hit bottom. Right at this moment. Right now. Everything was gone—cosmetics, clothes, the last of her money. She had nothing left. The disaster that had been picking up speed like a runaway train ever since Chloe's death had finally jumped the track.
Dallie tapped a motel pen on the top of the desk. “Francie, I couldn't help but notice that you didn't have any credit cards tucked away in that purse of yours... or any plane ticket either. Now, I want to hear you tell me real quick that you've got that ticket to London put away somewhere inside Mr. Vee-tawn, and that Mr. Vee-tawn is closed up in one of those twenty-five-cent lockers at the airport.”
She hugged her chest and stared at the wall. “I don't know what to do,” she choked out.
“You're a big girl, and you'd better come up with something real fast.”
“I need hel
p.” She turned to him, pleading for understanding. “I can't handle this by myself.”
The front legs of his chair banged to the floor. “Oh, no you don't! This is your problem, lady, and you're not going to push it off on me.” His voice sounded hard and rough, not like the laughing Dallie who'd picked her up at the side of the road, or the knight in shining armor who'd saved her from certain death at the Blue Choctaw.
“If you didn't want to help me,” she cried out, “you shouldn't have offered me that ride. You should have left me, like everyone else.”
“Maybe you better start thinking about why everybody wants to get rid of you so bad.”
“It's not my fault, don't you see? It's circumstances.” She began to tell him all of it, beginning with Chloe's death, stumbling over her words in her haste to get them out before he walked away. She told him how she'd sold everything to pay for her ticket home only to realize that even if she did have a ticket, she couldn't possibly go back to London without money, without clothes, with the news of her humiliation in that terrible movie on everyone's lips so that they were all laughing at her. She realized right then that she had to stay where she was, where no one knew her, until Nicky got back from his sordid fling with the blond mathematician and she had a chance to talk to him over the telephone. That's why she'd set out to find Dallie at the Blue Choctaw. “Don't you see? I can't go back to London until I know Nicky will be right there at the airport waiting for me.”
“I thought you told me he was your fiancé?”
“He is.”
“Then why is he having a fling with a blond mathematician?”
“He's sulking.”
“Jesus, Francie—”
She rushed over to kneel down beside his chair and looked up at him with her heart-stopping eyes. “It's not my fault, Dallie. Really. The last time I saw him, we had this awful quarrel just because I turned down his marriage proposal.” A great stillness came over Dallie's face and she realized he had misinterpreted what she'd said. “No, it's not what you're thinking! He'll marry me! We've quarreled hundreds of times and he always proposes again. It's just a matter of getting hold of him on the telephone and telling him I forgive him.”