The drowning pool

“What happened to Nopal Valley?”

“It was ruined, absolutely ruined. Great hordes of low-class people, Mexicans and dirty oil crews, came in from gosh knows where, and simply blighted the town. We can’t let it happen here.”

“Absolutely not,” I said with a phoniness she had no ear to catch. “Quinto must remain a natural beauty spot and cultural centre. I’ve heard quite a lot about the Quinto Players, by the way.”

“Now have you really, Mr. Archer?” Her voice sank to a simpering whisper: “You’re not a Hollywood personage, are you?”

“Not exactly.” I left the question open. “I’ve done a good deal of work in and about Hollywood.” Peeping on fleabag hotel rooms, untying marital knots, blackmailing blackmailers out of business. Dirty, heavy, hot work on occasion.

She narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together as if she understood me. “I sensed you were from Hollywood. Of course you’ll be wanting to see the new play this weekend. Mr. Marvell wrote it himself—he’s a very brilliant man—and he’s directing it, too. Rita Treadwith, a very dear friend of mine, is helping with the costumes, and she says it has great possibilities: movies, Broadway, anything.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve had reports of it. Where’s the theater they’re rehearsing in?”

“Right off the highway in the center of town. Just turn right at the courthouse, and you’ll see the sign: Quinto Theatre.”

“Thank you,” I said, and went out. The screen door slammed a second time before I reached my car, and Henry came plodding toward me across the gravel. He was leathery and lean, beaten and parched by long summers. He came up so close to me that I could smell him.

“Listen, friend, you mean it what you said about settling down here?” He looked behind him to make sure that his wife was out of earshot, and spat in the gravel. “I got an income proposition if you’re interested. Ten thousand down and the rest out of earning. Fifty thousand for the works, that’s twelve good cottages and the good will.”

“You want to sell this place? To me?”

“You’ll never get a better at the price.”

“I thought you were mad about Quinto.”

He shot a contemptuous yellow glance at the door of the office. “That’s what she thinks. Thinks, hell. She lets the Chamber of Commerce do her thinking for her. I got a chance for a liquor license in Nopal.”

“Money in Nopal, I hear.”

“You can say it again. The Valley’s lousy with money since they struck oil, and there’s no spenders like oilmen. Easy come, easy go.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not interested.”

“That’s OK, I just thought I’d raise the question. She won’t let me put up a sign, or list the god-damn place.” He plodded back to the office.

The men and women in the streets had rumpled, sun-worshipping look of people on holiday. Many of them were very young or very old, and most of the former wore bathing-suits. The white Spanish buildings seemed unreal, a stage-settings painted upon the solid blue sky. To the left at the bottom of the cross-streets the placid sea rose up like a flat blue wall.

I parked in front of a restaurant near the court-house and went in for a cold lunch. The waitress had a red-checked apron that matched the tablecloth, and a complexion that matched the coffee. I tipped her very lightly, and walked around the block to the Quinto Theatre. It was two o’clock by my watch, time for the rehearsal to be under way. If the play was scheduled for the week end, they’d be ru

The theatre stood back from the street in a plot of yellowing grass: a massive windowless box of a building with its stucco scabbing off in patches to show the aged plaster. Two weather-pocked plaster pillars supported the roof of the portico. On each of the pillars a playbill a

The third of the glossy trio interested me. It was a man in his late thirties, with light hair waving over a pale and noble brow. The eyes were large and sorrowful, the mouth small and sensitive. The picture had been taken in three-quarters face to show the profile, which was very fine. Mr. James Slocum, the caption said, as “The Ironist”. If the picture could be believed, Mr. James Slocum’s pan was a maiden’s dream. Not mine.

A prewar Packard sedan drew up to the curb in front of the theatre, and a young man got out. His long legs were tightly encased in a pair of faded levis, his heavy shoulders bulged in a flowered Hawaiian shirt. The levis and the shirt didn’t go with the black chauffeur’s cap on his head. He must have been conscious of the cap, because he tossed it on the front seat of the Packard before he came up the walk. The glistening dark hair frothed on his head in tight curls. He looked at me from eyes that were paled by the deep tan of his face. Another maiden’s dream. They pastured in herds in the California resorts.

Dream Two opened the heavy door to my left, and it swung shut behind him. I waited a minute and followed him into the lobby. It was small and close and dimly lit by the red glow of the Exit lamps. The young man had disappeared, but there was a murmur of voices beyond a further door. I crossed the lobby and entered the main auditorium. It was blacked out except for the stage, where there were lights and people. I sat down in an aisle seat in the back row, and wondered what the hell I was doing there.

The set had been erected, an English drawing-room with period furniture, but the players were not yet in costume. James Slocum, looking as pretty as his picture, in a yellow turtleneck sweater, shared the stage with the blonde girl, in slacks. They were talking at each other in center stage.

“Roderick,” the girl was saying, “have you honestly been aware of my love for you, and never breathed a word of it to me?”

“Why should I have?” Slocum shrugged his shoulders in wary amusement. “You were content to love, and I was content to be loved. Naturally, I did my best to encourage you.”

“You encourage me?” She overdid the surprise, and her voice screeched slightly. “But I never knew.”

“I took care that you should not, until you had passed the narrow line that lies between admiration and passion. But I was always ready with a match for your cigarette, a compliment for your gown, a touch of the hand at parting.” He moved his hand in the air, and unconsciously underlined the corn.

“But your wife! What of her? It seems incredible that you should deliberately lead me on the dark edge of adultery.”

“Dark, my dear? On the contrary, passion is radiant with the radiance of a thousand suns, luminous as the dayspring, shot through with rainbow splendors!” He spoke the words as if he meant them, in a ringing voice which held only a trace of reediness. “Beside the love that we may have—shall have—the legal mating of the married is the coupling of frightened rabbits in a hutch.”

“Roderick, I hate and fear and adore you,” the girl a

He gave her both his hands and lifted her to her feet. “I adore to be adored,” he answered lightly. Clinch.

A thin figure had been pacing nervously in the orchestra pit, silhouetted against the reflection of the footlights. Now he vaulted onto the stage in a single antelope bound, and circled the mugging pair like a referee.

“Very fine,” he said. “Very fine, indeed. You’ve caught my intention beautifully, both of you. But would it be possible, Miss Dermott, to bring out just a shade more emphatically the contrast between hate and fear on the one hand, and adore on the other? After all, that’s the very keynote of the first act: the ambivalence of Clara’s response to the Ironist, externalizing the ambivalence of his attitude to love and life. Would you take it again from ‘rabbits in a hutch’?”