. . . since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.
JOHN DONNE
I 4 IKE millions of liberal-minded Americans of her generation who got involved in the 1968 election campaign with high hopes of chang- ing the world for the better, only to see Martin Luther King murdered, Robert Kennedy murdered, Eugene McCarthy defeated in the conven-tion, Hubert Humphrey defeated in the election and Richard Nixon elected, Marianne felt like an absolute idiot for ever having concerned herself with politics and vowed she would never read a newspaper again.
And she wished she hadn't had an affair with David Roman in Los Angeles. What bothered her most was the way David had played with her long hair, combing it with his fingers and covering her breasts with it, just as Mark had always done. Whenever she remembered Mark dressing her body in her hair, winding it around her nipples when they stood up, she couldn't help remembering David too, and that was death.
The thought of the unloved lover spoiled her best memories. She felt so remorseful and so disgusted with herself, she decided to have her hair cut. It belonged to Mark. She didn't want anyone else to play with it.
Not even Ben.
The hairdresser did his job under protest and when, at the end of the operation, she studied her new head in the mirror, she was shocked to see how much smaller she had become. 'Well, my love, I made myself ugly for you,' she thought, trying to see herself with Mark's eyes. While driving back to the house, she half believed in telepathy. She thought of Mark in his boat, sitting up, looking around disturbed, not knowing why he suddenly missed her — she loved his puzzled look. Did he remember her hair? "I decided I won't let it grow until we're together," she said aloud."That's a promise. So why don't you call me, why don't you drop me a line?"
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And what if he could hear her? What if he could sense her thoughts somehow?
"Good Lord, what did you do with your hair?" Joyce cried out when Marianne got back to the house.
"Is there any message for me?" Marianne asked impatiently.
WEEKS earlier, when Mark's first letter had been delivered to Bellevue Place, Marianne had been up in her room asleep. Hardwick, breakfast-ing alone as usual, noticed the Bahamian stamp on her letter in the mail tray and slipped it into his pocket to read in the office.
Even though he had seen the film, Hardwick was shocked. A love letter to his wife confessing to breaking and entering and stealing her underwear, and reminding her that she didn't care for her husband and had promised to leave him! And what was this about finishing him off?
Hardwick got into such a rage that he tore the paper into little bits be-fore he knew what he was doing.
However, once the insulted husband got over what he dismissed as an emotional reaction, a useless waste of energy, he was quite prepared to look at the incident from another point of view and decided that it was a wholly positive development, forewarning him of the need to cen-sor his wife's mail.
In more peaceful times this might have been quite a difficult task, considering that the house was full of unreliable servants whose loyalty was to her rather than to him. But these were not peaceful times. Some weeks earlier a chemical company executive had been assassinated in Venice by the Red Brigades, and this murder, bringing into focus the increasing hostility and violence against people connected with the chemical industry, made it quite natural for Hardwick to have all mail addressed to his home redirected to the security department in the HCI Building to be checked for explosive devices. The letters were then brought to his top-floor office, where he sifted through them before passing them on to his secretary for delivery by company courier to the house on Bellevue Place. Of course, the mail was also checked for explosive devices. Hardwick was the master of arrangements which served more than one purpose; he had the gift of making things play in several ways at once.
Mark wrote to Marianne every day, little suspecting that he was ask-ing to be murdered. Though he knew that Hardwick was a rich and powerful man, he had heard too much about the equality of human beings to appreciate that powerful men must be feared. He assumed that Hard-wick was no more of a man than himself; if anything he was a lesser man because Marianne didn't love him. (Most of the time he managed to convince himself that she still detested her husband.) Besides, she 179
had said that Hardwick was in love with another woman, had all kinds of other girls as well, and didn't care for her. Mark was not vain himself and never imagined that Hardwick might become his deadly enemy out of sheer vanity; few people, and even fewer nineteen-year-olds, suspect qualities in others that they themselves don't possess. Mark wondered sometimes, as he wasn't getting any reply, whether his letters could have fallen into the wrong hands, but he always rejected the idea. He was certain that if Marianne's husband caught any of the letters he would make a row, but, as he wasn't in love with his wife, would bow to the inevitable and withdraw. In his most desperate moods he even wanted Hardwick to find out everything and get mad. Marianne would come back if her marriage broke up. So he kept writing to her, begging her to remember that she loved him.
"What is it with this guy?' Hardwick wondered. He tore up twenty-three letters before they sto -ed coming.
Marianne never imagined that anyone but a bomb-disposal expert had tampered with her mail. If anything, she was grateful to Kevin for pro-tecting them all — it was proof that he was a caring person in his own way — and she always thought of this when asking herself why she stayed with him.
Still, a couple of weeks after Nixon was elected President, Marianne declared that she wanted to go back to Santa Catalina.
"Great idea!" exclaimed Hardwick with hearty animation. "Let's all go down for the weekend!" She couldn't leave her husband behind, but she insisted that he take her to lunch at the Seven Seas Club.
She hoped that Mark would be there and they would see each other:
she would seduce him back with a look.
MARK was standing in the lobby in his hated uniform and had just caught a depressing glimpse of himself in a mirror, when he saw Marianne en-ter with her husband. Overwhelmed by a profound sense of his insignif-icance, he backed into a corridor, ran out of the building, through the garden and into the staff house, all the way to his room, locked the door and fell on his bed. So she was back, the proud heartless rich bitch who hadn't deigned to reply to his letters! How mean and severe she looked!
She had cut her hair, her beautiful long, silver-blond hair which he had loved to wind around her nipples; she had got rid of it to spite him. How she must look down on him, thinking that he would never amount to anything. He couldn't decide whether she had noticed him in the lobby or not, but if she had he hoped she could see how he hated her.
Someone was knocking at his door. What if it was Marianne? He imagined her coming in and looking around disdainfully at his terrible 18o
little room. "So this is how far you've got since you stopped wasting your time with me!" she said with a malicious smile. "And where's my comb? What did you do with my panties?"
He was burning with shame. Yet why should he be ashamed? He hadn't killed anybody! What was there to be ashamed of?
The knocking was getting louder; he finally had to open the door. In the corridor stood his old enemy, the gray-haired bellboy, telling him with a sneer that Mr. Weaver wanted him back at the desk immediately.
Mark told him to say that he was sick. The man would have been happy to report that Mark was lying, but could see that he was telling the truth:
his face was gray and his teeth were chattering. Once alone, Mark locked the door again and fell back on the bed.
It was too late.
Hardwick's theft of the letters had made Mark and Marianne despair of each other. How else could Mark have assumed that she had cut her hair to spite him?
When he saw her walk into the Club, all he could think was that she despised him for being a nobody who hadn't accomplished anything (Marianne, who didn't know the meaning of the word ambition!), and when she caught his bitter look, she felt she had lost all her charm for him. `So he can't stand the sight of me,' she decided.
Neither of them gave a thought to her husband, who didn't seem to notice anything.
On Monday Hardwick went back to the States alone, leaving his wife on the island. She waited, she didn't know why — she waited for some greater certainty. She waited for him to call. When she heard, a few days later, that Mark was having an affair with the social director at the Club, she flew back to Chicago.
"It's all for the best," she told Joyce on the plane. "I was right to get mad at him in the first place. Obviously he wasn't serious, he really did think that he was wasting time with me. If he didn't, he would have tried to get in touch with me again. It can't be that easy to discourage somebody who cares for you!"
"You got mad at him for nothing!"
Marianne raised her hands to her burning cheeks and looked at Joyce intently, thinking about her remark. "You're right." She nodded se- verely. "I didn't behave like a woman who was in love. We probably didn't really fit each other. So even if I had gone back when he phoned me, it wouldn't have worked out."
"And your marriage is really-truly working out," Joyce commented with restrained sarcasm.
"Well, Kevin's changed," Marianne replied defensively. "He's dif-ferent, he's nicer."
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"Maybe he heard something. There's a lot of big mouths on the is-land and everybody knew about it. He heard something and he's trying to win you back!"
"You think he knows and he's jealous?" asked Marianne incredu-lously.
They discussed the pros and cons very thoroughly. Millions are like this: they spend hours with friends trying to figure out what their hus-bands, wives, lovers know or think.
"If Kevin knew anything, and if he cared, he would either have it out with me or try to make love with me," Marianne finally said. "And he doesn't."
This argument seemed to be conclusive for both women.
"No, he's changed because his big romance with the model is over.
He must have a sex life with somebody, but he evidently regards us as his family . . ."
To convince herself, Marianne tried to convince Joyce that there was a great deal to be said for her marriage. "He plays with the children, he worries about what we eat and drink, he always sends the plane for us, he looks after our safety — that's more than many wives can say for their husbands. He's not as heartless and cynical as he pretends to be."
Joyce rolled her eyes. "If you say so."
"My father says Kevin's doing more for pollution control than any other chemical manufacturer. They use HCI scrubbers now in the smoke-stacks at the steel plants."
"I know, you don't have to tell me," Joyce said, offended. "I know he got a medal for them." It didn't seem right to her that there should be anything good about the man who raped her and then looked through her without interest or guilt.
"And he's the father of Creighton and Ben," Marianne sighed. "I must never forget that. It's a marriage of friendship. We don't have any conflict. At least we're friends."
Kevin was at the airport to meet them, arms outstretched, smiling.
When she saw his tall, imposing figure, his welcoming smile, Marianne steeled her heart and smiled back, saying to herself, 'Yes, at least we're friends.'
"Wonderful to see you all!" Hardwick exclaimed. While they were apart, he had made up his mind that the bastard who screwed his wife and the men who filmed them doing it would have to be done away with by Baglione. As for his wife, he was more or less satisfied with seeing her unhappy.
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