The feminine conception of happiness suffers the fate of all feminine conceptions: it does not interest men.
MONTHERLANT
H
AVING listened to her husband explaining that he was too busy to fly home, Marianne joyfully put down the phone, ran to her car and drove back to the Club to fetch Mark: they had been apart for six hours and she didn't want to spend any more time without him. Mark, who was on duty in the lobby when she arrived, went to the manager's office to request a week's leave from the part-time job which he had held for less than two months. If the young man had only had the back-ing of Mr. Heller at head office, Weaver might have fired him; if he had only been a friend of Mrs. Kevin Hardwick, Weaver might still have fired him; but he didn't feel up to creating problems with both head of-fice and the island's greatest lady. With a startled blink and an unhappy smile, he granted Mark a week's leave without pay.Mark and Marianne were gone by the time the day's guests, fresh from the plane, crowded into the lobby. Sypcovich, one of the new arrivals, was pleased to note Mark's absence, though he continued to act with caution, carefully ignoring the conspicuous figure ahead of him at the reception desk.
This conspicuous figure — a pale, thin, bearded man in his thirties, bedecked with cameras and silver chains — had just made out his reg-istration card, giving his name as Anthony Edward Masterson and his occupation as film director, and was magnifying his impact by loudly ordering the desk clerk to cut short "the bureaucratic shit". Mollified by the clerk's inquiry whether he wished to occupy the Louis Quinze, Old West or Hokusai suite, he opted for the Old West.
Later he could be seen in the Club's gardens with four cameras around his neck, taking pictures of the yellow paradise trees and the flame trees 1.53
with their fiery red flowers in bloom, and then walking down to the beach to photograph "the light". As he explained to some inquisitive guests and bellboys who gathered around, he was "scouting locations", trying to decide whether he should film his next picture in the Out Islands.
In spite of — or perhaps because of — his uncouth manner, Master-son played the part of a film director very convincingly. An expectant would-be artist, he believed that one day he would be as famous as his idols, Hitchcock, Fellini and John Huston. Having already acquired sev-eral expensive cameras, had his sharp nose reshaped by plastic surgery and rounded out his absurdly pointed chin by growing a beard, he imag-ined that he was progressing toward his goal with giant steps. While waiting to become a great film director, by transmutation as it were, he earned what he called "a reasonable income" with blackmail, espe-cially in small towns where reputations were still worth something. He worked mostly with his beloved Apollo 220, a hand-held i6-millimeter cine-camera with telescopic lenses which he named his "spin-off baby"
because it owed its existence to the technical innovations in aerial pho-tography developed in the U.S. space program. With the Apollo 220 he could film couples behind closed windows or at a distance of several miles. Fascinated by Masterson's stories about people who refused to be blackmailed with compromising still photos but would pay far beyond their means for the same thing as a motion picture, Sypcovich liked to provide his clients, if they could afford it, with this most up-to-date kind of evidence, and occasionally took Masterson away from his criminal activities to do some "honest work" on divorce cases. The two men had got to know each other when Sypcovich was hired by a worried businessman whom Masterson was blackmailing and collected sufficient evidence against Masterson to have him put away for life; blackmailing the blackmailer, he saved his client and also provided himself with a cameraman who would always do what he was told. Sypcovich may have been only a small independent operator but he chose his associate ac-cording to the same sagacious principle that allowed President Lyndon Johnson to dismiss warnings about the unreliability of a political ally with the historic phrase: I trust him — I have his balls in my pocket.
The private detective and his cameraman pretended to get acquainted and strike up a friendship at the Club's bar on the evening of their ar-rival.
The following morning Coco, five hundred dollars richer, drove them up to the private detective's favorite haunt, the ruins of the Spanish fort on top of the hill. It was a romantic spot: tall grasses and low wild trees grew out of the limestone rock; the crumbling thick stone walls, as high as six feet in places, were covered with vines trumpeting green and pur-ple, and flowers grew out of every crevice, for — in the words of Earle Birney's poem —
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Flowers live here as easily as air . . . they grow on light
A scalloped leaflet lying on a stair
will puff pink buds and root itself in stone —
A constant gentle breeze blew from the sea, and the birds, bright as flying flowers, sounded all their notes. At 264 feet above sea level, the hilltop was also an excellent observation post, giving a panoramic view of the Hardwicks' garden and beach as well as the surrounding waters.
Coco drove back down to the Club and the two men from Chicago spread their straw mats in the shade of the ruins. They had to wait only about an hour before the lovers, walking hand in hand on the beach, came into the range of the binoculars and the Apollo 220. Masterson had been standing up filming the couple intently for some minutes when he felt something cold on his bare toes. He looked down and — a city man not used to any living thing touching him — let out an unearthly scream that silenced the birds. The lizard froze and turned as pale as Masterson's skin.
"What if they heard you?" hissed Sypcovich.
"It looks like a crocodile!" Masterson cried out, kicking himself free, when he could speak and move again. "The place is full of them!" Trying to get rid of his fear, he put down his camera, picked up a stick, and began to chase lizards among the ruins, bent on destroying some of na-ture's loveliest and most useful creatures, which flicker about like light-ning, change color most amusingly, eat evil insects, and all this without making a sound: unlike their loud and clammy relatives, the frogs, they are cool and dry and don't feel the need to croak about all the good they do. If the hilltop wasn't swarming with biting flies and mosquitoes, it was thanks to those lizards the blackmailer tried in vain to kill.
"You missed them kissing," said Sypcovich, who had kept his bin-oculars trained on the beach. "Get back to work!"
"What for?" asked Masterson, who wanted to get away from the place.
"We got them holding hands. That ought to be enough for the dumbest husband."
"I want hardcore evidence!"
Masterson grinned, and moving his fingers briskly, scratched his beard on both sides: he thought he understood. "That's smart . . . you won't give these films to Miss Marshall, you'll sell them to Mrs. Hardwick.
She'll pay us more! Good."
The private detective, who had been observing Mark and Marianne from a sitting position, resting his back against an old wall, lowered his binoculars and looked up. His small eyes glittered between the folds of fat; he hadn't thought of the possibility of blackmail. "Nobody's paying us," he grunted. "I'm employing you on a flat-fee basis."
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"I already earned my flat fee."
By the time they stopped arguing the lovers had gone into one of the cottages.
Next day Masterson managed to film them on the Hermit: Mrs. Hard-wick walked about the deck topless, and several times the actor's son had one arm around her with his hand tipping her breast.
"Now we can get back to the pool," Masterson declared. "I got miles of film here showing them half-naked on the boat — and I need a swim!"
He packed away his "spin-off baby" and began wiping the sweat from his armpits.
Sypcovich just shook his head, feeling too hot to speak. It was one of those May afternoons that turn into burning summer at the zoth parallel.
"Well then, you watch them and tell me if there's anything new,"
said Masterson peevishly. "I'm going to sit down and rest." The shade had moved and he moved his straw mat over to it. After casting a searching look at the ground, he lay down on the mat and fell asleep, but was promptly wakened to film Mrs. Hardwick and the young punk lying on the deck mattress. Not that it amounted to much: they were only talking.
Sypcovich got his hardcore evidence on the seventh morning. "Didn't I tell you we should start early!" he exclaimed triumphantly, focusing his binoculars on the Hermit anchored less than three miles away; he could see them clearly.
Masterson could see them too. "I got them in close-up," he said hoarsely, not wishing to appear affected; he always became agitated when he saw a woman making too much fuss over a man. A lizard ran across his feet, but he didn't feel it. "Listen, Howie, she must have her own money," he went on in a careful voice, so that he wouldn't jolt the camera and blur the picture. "If she's the big Montgomery's daughter like you say. You get me? It's your show, I'm not trying to take it over — but there's more in this than a fee on a divorce case. You ought to give her a chance to buy the picture for fifty grand."
"Paying money means nothing to her, but you show this film in court during the divorce proceedings and she'll never live it down!" Sypco-vich exulted, flapping his open shirt with his left hand to make the most of the breeze. "She'll never be able to come back to Chicago." He was a great local patriot, and not being able to live in his adopted city seemed to him a real misfortune.
"That's what I mean, Howie. She'll be glad to pay fifty, seventy-five thousand."
"They'll take her children away from her, and she'll blame that young punk for it!"
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"She'd appreciate this movie, Howie, she would want to keep it -you'd be doing her a favor."
The private detective shook his heavy shoulders as if wishing to shake off some oppressive feeling. He wanted to savor the joy of vengeance, and Masterson was spoiling it for him. "These people are not interested in what you can do for them," he sputtered. "You go to that young punk, you talk to him just to be friendly, just to establish contact, like one human being to another, and he'll tell you he has a headache! That's right. And why is she mixed up with him? Because his daddy's some two-bit movie star —"
"Listen, we could split seventy-five big ones, Howard! She's a lady, she would pay that much just out of shyness."
Sypcovich gave a violent scratch to his belly, as swollen as a preg-nant woman's and as furry as a monkey's. "I have my professional eth-ics. I don't double-cross a client."
"Pamper your client or make a packet. It's that simple." As far as Masterson was concerned, not to double-cross people was to pamper them.
"I'm telling you, she'll lose her children and he'll lose her. They'll both have a headache then. It won't be easy for him to find another woman with a yacht."
"Lay off them, why don't you," said Masterson. "So long as she pays, who gives a shit?"
"Look!" Sypcovich snorted, disgusted. "They're shameless. Noth-ing's sacred to people like that."
THE "shameless" lovers on the Hermit were still in that state of sweet obsession with each other's bodies that springs from youth, health and the thrill of discovery, but — there is a difference between the sexes -Mark needed more and more rest while Marianne needed less and less.
That morning she had been awake for hours, sitting beside him on the deck mattress with her knees drawn up against her chest and her arms folded over her shins, watching him sleep, until the rising sun made her feel warm and she decided to wake him.
This was what Masterson filmed and what Sypcovich hoped would be grounds to part her from her children, though it is a natural and common way for lovers to say hello: she lifted Mark's penis with her tongue and put it in her mouth. Until she had fallen in love with him she herself had considered such closeness an unclean thing and had never done it for her husband, but during the last few days it had become a ritual; this was the way she started her lovemaking with Mark every morning. She wanted him in her mouth first, to cure him of impatience, to get her second chance, to have him move inside her for a long, long time, so 157
that she could come and come until she was near death. Moist with ex-pectation, she fondled him with her lips, and when Mark was awake he drew her to him and they made love the way lovers do when they want to drink each other.
Masterson had it all on film — not that anything that mattered about it could be filmed.
What medium could communicate sexual ecstasy, the singing of all the senses?
Afterward they were quiet for a while as if still listening.
Mark, stretched out on his stomach, was gazing at the water, or rather, at the shadow of the Hermit's mast on the yellow sand some sixteen feet below, while Marianne leaned against him, her head resting on his shoulder. Her body exuded that singular freshness that some women share with fruits and flowers when exposed to sun, wind and water.
Only one thing was wrong.
There was a clock ticking inside Mark's head, striking every hour, marking all the time that he failed to spend looking for the Flora. With Marianne beside him he managed to ignore it, trying to adapt to the quiet, slow rhythm of the waves. But then she got up and went down to the galley to see about breakfast. As soon as he began to feel her absence, he was overwhelmed by an intense feeling of guilt and anxiety.
What was he doing vacationing on a luxury yacht, when nothing about his future was settled?
He hadn't looked for his ship for six whole days!
Was he a beach bum?
A gigolo?
Marianne had never returned to the subject of their going away so that he could finish his studies and write his history of Peru; she didn't want him to do anything. He couldn't depend on anybody, not even on her.
He remembered his mother trying to jump out of the window in Madrid because nobody gave a damn what happened to them; he remembered his hunger, and suddenly felt certain that one day he would starve. All the harsh truths of life crowded in on him when Marianne left him alone.
He decided to have a serious talk with her, explain to her that she must stop being a spoiled rich woman bossing him around. (He could be very critical of her when she wasn't there.) He swore he would make her understand that there was more to life than making love and listening to music, that he didn't want to be kept by anybody, that he had to find his ship if they were ever to be each other's equals, that sharks weren't all that dangerous if one was careful . . . But when she came back, her eyes laughing, he thought of her ugly look and said nothing. Love made him a coward every time: he didn't have the courage to upset her.
She was carrying a jar of orange juice with two straws in it (having never lived without servants, this was how she cooked when they were 158
on their own). Noticing that he looked morose, she took this to mean that he had missed her and pressed herself close to him, offering him one of the straws. "If Kevin comes tomorrow I won't let him stay the night," she said. "Let him sleep at the Club! Soon we'll be able to get married if you want to."
As they put their heads together to sip the orange juice, Mark couldn't help thinking that if they had been looking for the wreck all this time they might already have found it. And then there would be no conflict between them.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked him, thinking of making love again.
"I was just thinking how time goes," he sighed. "We've wasted six whole days!"
Surprise made the insult all the worse. She still had the taste of his sperm in her mouth, mixed with the orange juice. "What do you mean, wasted?" she asked, pulling away and staring at him with disbelief.
Marianne got up and stepped to the rail to get as far from him as possible. Mark leaped to his feet and reached out for her, but she pushed him away. "I despise people who think of nothing but money!" she said with tears in her eyes.
She spoke with so much hostility that Mark began to shake uncontrol-lably. "What is it? What did I say that was so horrible? You're rich, so you think I shouldn't mind being poor, is that it? You're like all the rich, you breathe money like air, so you think it's nothing!"
They argued, drifting further apart with every word, maddened by the coldness and contempt in each other's voices. Mark grabbed her, ready to hit her, but the flash of fear in her eyes brought him to his senses. "Mar-ianne, please," he begged. "What are we getting all worked up about? I love you and you love me and once we've found the Flora we'll have our whole lives to enjoy ourselves!"
She looked at him as if he had turned into a stranger. "No, thanks. I
She looked at him as if he had turned into a stranger. "No, thanks. I