Behind him, a perfect bronze body dive-bombs into the water. Its head pops up, white teeth laughing, and I realize I recognize him.
Who is that?
I am thinking. What film have I seen him in before?
Max leans forward, distracting my attention. He puts a hand on mine. ‘She told you we were lovers, didn’t she?’
‘She and I were close friends,’ I reply. ‘What do you expect?’
He says, ‘Dora, you and Inez were close friends. And Inez and I were friends, too. But we weren’t lovers. We never were, and we never intended to be. Inez already had a lover …’ He pauses. ‘The Union man … I told you, he turned up in Moscow. He was all she talked about. Lawrence O’Neill.’
‘Nonsense,’ I say. ‘She was in love with you.’
He shakes his head. ‘No, she wasn’t.’ He seems to be searching for the words. ‘She encouraged you to
believe
that we were lovers …’
‘She didn’t “encourage” me,’I correct him. ‘She
told
me.’
But again he shakes his head. ‘After the incident with the guns. At the cottage. You warned her off him – and quite rightly, I dare say. Inez wanted you and Xavier off her back. And it was a sort of … well, I suppose it was an arrangement we came to. In exchange for all the help she gave me with the tea party, I agreed to keep her secret for her … cover for her. I suppose I played along.’
What is he talking about?
‘You must be confused,’ I say.
‘Inez and I were never lovers,’ he says again. ‘She was going to work at the magazine with me, but she was going to live with Lawrence O’Neill. They were besotted. He had a room in the Corinado, if you remember. Half the time she said she was helping me …’ He lets it hang.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I say at last. And then: ‘After all, it was twenty years ago. You may be confused. I have read that you are quite the lothario.’
‘Ha!’ It is dismissive.
‘Well, it was only a few days, remember. And almost twenty years ago now. You have probably forgotten—’
‘It was eight days. As you rightly reminded me. And thank you – I have certainly not forgotten. I remember very clearly the last time we saw each other …’
‘She came to my rooms. There was a sort of recklessness about her at the end, wasn’t there? It was very attractive in the beginning, but the last time I saw her – it wasn’t really attractive, it was alarming. The sense of decorum … I’m not a stickler for these things – far from it. Even less so, back then. But it was only a small room. With a desk and a bed, and she used to …’ He pauses to choose the word. ‘She used to seethe with this terrific sexual energy … and I found it uncomfortable. Claustrophobic. She couldn’t seem to stay still. She wouldn’t settle. It was the day before the attack on Forbes – or was it the morning of Forbes? Yes. It must have been.’
‘On the day she died?’
He nods. ‘Because I went out much later that day, and then again the following day to see what carnage the strikers had wrought, and I couldn’t wait to get back to my typewriter and set to work … Which was – is – unusual, I assure you. Ordinarily I will do anything to avoid the moment of setting pen to paper. But the assault on Ludlow – and the way those ladies spoke during our tea—’
‘Yes, yes,’ I say impatiently.
‘I had written three quarters of the article by the time she came by. She was wearing a black felt hat that flopped over her eyes and it made her look … beautiful. Well, she was beautiful, I don’t argue with that. Just deranged. She was on her way to see the mother of the poor boy she had befriended. He worked in the hardware store, and he had a connection with the Union. I don’t re- member his name. I never met him – he was already dead by the time I came to town.’
‘Cody.’
‘Cody. That’s it. Bony Cody, she called him. She was on her way to meet with his mother. She had some cockeyed sense of
noblesse oblige
. She seemed to think her mere presence could alleviate the suffering of the lower classes. Hell, and perhaps it could. Who knows? She had such charm, such incredible warmth, didn’t she? And of course, she was so beautiful.’
I smile. ‘After Captain Lippiatt was murdered, she wanted to pay a visit to his widow. She asked me if I knew whether a widow existed. I laughed at her so hard! That was the first time we met … Yes, she was very warm. She said she was going to give cash to Cody’s mother to help out. I don’t know if she ever did.’
‘That’s right! She was carrying a bundle of dollars with her. A lot of cash. She came to my door. The desk clerk already knew her, of course, and I presumed she had come directly from Lawrence’s room. I had no idea she was coming to see me until she was standing there, asking to come in. She said Lawrence had gone to Forbes to see what was happening out there and that I had missed the chance of a lift. ‘It’s all going crazy up at Forbes,’ she said. ‘The company guards have barricaded themselves inside the mine, and the strikers have got them hostage and they’re threatening to blow it up. I’m surprised to find you sitting here.’ She pushed her way into the room without asking, and I don’t deny it, I was irritated. I had work to do. And yes – the tea party article was in my typewriter, and I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about letting her see it. Like any reporter, I wanted the article to appear, and I did not want to have to deal with her squeamishness before publication. She had done a great job setting the thing up.’ He laughs. ‘Inez knew just what I was after and, yes, I suppose by then – she had served her purpose. She couldn’t help me any more by then. I just wanted to write the piece. And I suppose –
yes
– I was hoping that by the time the article was printed … Oh, I don’t know, that life would have moved on. She would have forgotten …’
‘She was coming to live with you in New York,’ I insist. ‘How
could
she have forgotten?’
‘I already told you,’ he says. ‘She was never intending to live with me.’ He waves at a passing waiter, and turns to me. ‘Do you want another one?’ He orders two more martinis. I wait. ‘… So, yes, she was coming to New York. Or she
said
she was coming to New York. But I never entirely believed it. Did you?’
‘She sent her luggage on!’
‘Which supports my point. I always assumed she sent the luggage on in an attempt to persuade herself she was truly going to follow. To make the move seem more real to her. I think she was terrified, Dora. I also think that whatever she did, ultimately, depended on what Lawrence O’Neill told her to do. Was he really coming to New York? It’s what he told her, but I mean …’ Max stops. Looks up at the sun. ‘It’s getting rather hot, isn’t it? I don’t know how you Californians put up with this heat. When he returns with the drinks, I’m going to ask our friend to move us into the shade – if you’re happy with that? Would it bother you?’
‘Not at all. Tell me then …’ I am growing impatient. So much of what I thought I understood is beginning to unravel. Or is Max lying? But why would he? What is to be gained from it, after all this time? ‘So Inez burst into the room and wouldn’t sit down. Did you try to hide the article from her?’
‘I did. At first. That is, I offered her a drink, and asked her – about ten times – to sit down. Her pacing was driving me crazy. I had the sense that she had something she wanted to tell me … She’d start to say it and then look as if she might burst into tears, and stop – and then she’d leap off on another tangent entirely. Whatever it was she came to say, she never said it. Which is why that letter is so frustrating … But she talked about you and her brother. She was unhappy because of your refusal to support her with the tea party. She called you “a pair of old bluenoses”. She couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t support her. I could, of course … I’m not sure that I tried very hard to explain it. She was terribly jealous of your friendship.’
‘
Jealous?
’ I am astonished and, I recognize, pathetically flattered. Inez? Jealous of us? I had always assumed that she pitied us. I laugh. ‘I don’t think so.’
Max sends me a queer look. He says, ‘You and Xavier were her most loyal friends. Without you two to beat against, she would have been …’ he stops to think. ‘She would have been rudderless. She needed you both, clucking and tutting around her. It gave her a kind of definition.’
‘She had her aunt, as you put it, “clucking and tutting” for her. Tutting for all Colorado.’
‘Yes. Her aunt was sweet, but she was dumb. She hardly counted. Inez was very fond of her, I remember. She talked about how she would miss her when she came to live in New York. She worried about her aunt’s health. Something about a bad heart. But, as I say, I’m not convinced that Inez ever really believed she would make the move. Even though I know a great part of her longed to do it. And, by the way, I think that was also what encouraged her to organize the wretched tea party. As if she was trying to make her own home uninhabitable. By alienating her friends and neighbours, she was attempting to drive herself out of town.’
‘You’ve been reading too much Freud,’ I say.
It seems to irritate him. He looks behind him, in search of distraction. ‘Ah-ha!’ he says. ‘Our friend is here at last!’ Actually our friend (the waiter) is several tables away. ‘What I was absolutely longing for,’ says Max, smiling into the eyes of his friend, ‘was a
fruit ice
. Do you serve a fruit ice? Would you like a fruit ice, Dora?’ he turns to me. ‘I hear they are delicious here at the Ambassador. A speciality of the house!’
I shake my head. ‘We have ordered fish, haven’t we?’
‘What? Why yes! How absurd. I had forgotten. Nevertheless …’ He laughs, that handsome, toothy laugh. But it doesn’t ring true. Any more than his request for a fruit ice. I wonder why he is so uncomfortable.
The waiter takes the order and shimmies onward. I say to Max, ‘Carry on. Don’t stop. Nothing makes any sense yet.’
He nods. ‘Our memories don’t appear to match,’ he agrees. ‘The letter is a great mystery … Well she was pacing my little room, making me seasick, and finally I persuaded her to sit on the chair by the bed. I was by the desk and, at first, I admit, I tried to extract the paper out of the cursed machine without her noticing.’ He laughs. ‘But she spotted it absolutely at once. That was the thing about Inez. One received the impression she was never
quite
concentrating, but she almost always
was
. She was never quite such the fool we all took her for.’
‘Excepting that she wound up on a slab in the mortuary on Main Street, while the rest of us walked away,’ I reply. It sounds far angrier than I intended. I suppose I am angry. I don’t recognize the Inez that Max is describing.
‘Indeed …’ he says. ‘In any case, she spotted my ploy at once, Dora. She held out her little hand, like an empress – I can see her now! – and absolutely demanded to see what I had written.
‘I shilly-shallied. As any reporter would, I hasten to add. But she insisted, and she wouldn’t let it go – and finally she threatened tears and …’ He runs his hands through his thick, grey hair. Smoke curls from the cigarette between his fingers. I listen out for the sizzle of hair oil, but it doesn’t come. ‘I am hopeless when women weep. Putty in their hands.’ He smiles. I feel irritated.
‘So. What did you show her?’
‘I had a fairly good draft of the first three quarters or so. I handed her the sheet that was in the typewriter, but – of course – she wanted the rest. There was a heap of sheets on my desk. Of course Inez, not being a writer, had no comprehension of how loathsome it is when somebody reads something that is not quite ready to be read …
‘Anyway, she read it – actually, I read it to her. And, I swear to you Dora: she adored it! She laughed so much she wouldn’t stop. Almost to the point where …’ He pauses. ‘I think – well, I think we both know she was extremely excitable. The fact is,’ he looks embarrassed, ‘she wasn’t terribly well, was she?’
‘As far as I remember, your article wasn’t terribly funny.’
‘It certainly wasn’t meant to be.’
‘Ridiculous, maybe. But not funny.’
He tips his head, irritated again, and ignores the interruption. ‘Anyway,’ he says. ‘She read it. It was lying on the desk when she came in. I certainly never left her alone in my room, and there was never any need for her to rifle through any drawers to find any papers … Dora, I’ll say it one more time. She and I were never lovers.’
‘But you were!’ I tell him.
He laughs, embarrassed.
I shake my head. I am embarrassed too … But he
was
her lover!
Inez told me
. She went into the smallest detail: more detail than I wanted – how he undressed her this way and kissed her that way and how it had obliterated memories of all that had gone before. I asked her: Lawrence doesn’t compare? And for a moment she looked blank, as if she couldn’t even remember who I was talking about.
Max says, ‘O’Neill took a room on the same floor at the Corinado. They were lovers, so far as I know, until the end. At least – that was the last time I saw her, and she certainly didn’t mention it was over. The last time I saw her,’ he says, gazing once again at the blue sky above my head, ‘she said she was on her way to visit Bony Cody’s uncle, or father … Was it in Trinidad, or was it out of town? I don’t remember. All I know is that she was on her way there, and she was carrying a lot of money. She and I squabbled – I told you that. But it wasn’t about the article. It was about me, being rather petulant and asking her to leave me in peace so I could get on with my work, and Inez being – well, as I say, she was frantic, wasn’t she? I couldn’t get rid of her, so in the end I had to be rather blunt with her. But we left on good terms. Excellent terms, I might even be tempted to say … At any rate, she gave me the most terrific hug before she left; wouldn’t let go. She thanked me, though I wasn’t sure what for; and I thanked her for all her help, and we agreed that we would see each other next at the train station. Although, I still contend that neither of us entirely believed it. And that was the last time I saw her.’
‘So?’
He shrugs. ‘So? Except for a trip out to Forbes the next morning, to examine the wreckage, I pretty much stayed in my room. At that point – after the Forbes battle – I was impatient to get back to New York again. If you had come to see me with Inez’s letter that day, the day you
should
have delivered the letter, then perhaps all these questions might have been answered long ago. I left a note with the desk clerk at the Corinado, informing Inez what train I would be on. She never turned up. I wrote. I told you: a couple of times before the article was published, a couple of times after … But I never heard from her again.’