The drowning pool

“Of course, Mr. Marvell.”

Which made him the author of the play, as I’d suspected. It was the kind of play that only a mother or an actor could love, the kind of stuff that parodied itself. Phony sophistication with a high gloss, and no insides at all.

I turned my attention to the darkened auditorium, which seemed larger than it was because it was almost empty. A few people were clustered in the first rows, silently watching the actors rehash their tripe. The rest of the plywood seats were unoccupied, except for a couple a few rows ahead of me. As my eyes became used to the dim light, I could make out a boy and a girl, their heads leaning close together. At least the boy was leaning toward her; the girl sat straight in the seat. When he raised his arm and placed it along the back, she moved to the next seat.

I saw his face as he leaned sideways to speak to her: Dream Two. “God damn you,” he said. “You treat me as if I was dirt. I think I’m getting someplace with you, and then you crawl into your little igloo and slam the door in my face.”

“Igloos don’t have doors, you crawl in through a tu

“That’s another thing.” He was trying to whisper, but anger jerked at his vocal cords and made the words uneven. “You think you’re so damn superior, the big brain. I could tell you things you never even heard of.”

“I don’t care to hear of them. I’m very interested in the play, Mr. Reavis, and I wish you’d leave me alone.”

“Mr. Reavis! What makes you so bloody formal all of a sudden. You were hot enough last night when I took you home, but now it’s ‘Mr. Reavis’.”

“I was not! And I won’t be talked to like that.”

“That’s what you think. You can’t play around with me, do you understand? I’m big stuff, and I got ideas, and there’s plenty of women I can have if I want them, see?”

“I know you’re irresistible, Mr. Reavis. My failure to respond is unquestionably pathological.”

“Two-bit words don’t mean nothing,” he cried in frustration and fury. “I’ll show you something that does mean something.”

Before she could move again, he was crouching in front of her, holding her down in her seat. She let out a stifled squawk and beat his face with closed hands. But he found her mouth and held on, with one of his large hands on either side of her head. I could hear their breath whistling, the seat creaking under the weight of their struggling bodies. I stayed where I was. They knew each other better than I knew them, and nothing could happen to her where they were.

He released her finally, but stayed bending over her, with something hopeful in the arch of his shoulders.

“Dirt!” she said. “You dirt.”

The words hit him hard, a spatter of mud in the face. “You can’t call me that!” He had forgotten about whispering. His hands were groping for her shoulders, or her neck.

I was halfway out of my seat when the overhead lights came on. The dialogue on the stage had ceased, and everyone in the theatre was ru

“Really! What on earth is happening here?” He sounded like a spinster schoolteacher who has caught a pupil in the act.

The boy had scrambled to his feet and half-turned, leaning over the back of the seat. There was shamed awkwardness in his movements, but danger, too. His muscles were strained taut, and his eyes were black ice.

Slocum stepped forward and laid his hand on Marvell’s shoulder. “Let me handle this, Francis.” He turned to the girl, who was sitting tense in her seat. “Now, Cathy, what’s been going on?”

“Nothing, father.” Her voice was demure again. “We were sitting here talking, and Pat got mad, that’s all.”

“He was kissing you,” Slocum said. “I saw you from the stage. You’d better wipe your face, and I’ll talk to you later.”

Her hand flew up to her mouth. “Yes, father,” she said between her fingers. She was a pretty girl, much younger than I’d thought from the words she used. The auburn hair blossomed at the back of her neck into curls that were alive with copper glints.

The boy looked down at her head, and back to her father. “No,” he said. “She had nothing to do with it. I tried to kiss her, and she wouldn’t let me.”

“You admit that, do you, Reavis?”

The boy walked up to Slocum, and dwarfed him. With his thin shoulder-blades projecting under the yellow sweater, it was Slocum who looked like the youngster. He stood where he was, unbending and outraged.

“Why shouldn’t I admit it?” Reavis said. “There’s no law against kissing a girl—”

Slocum spoke in deliberate cold fury: “Where my young daughter is concerned, certain things are impossible and inconceivable and”—he groped for a word and found it—“foul. No lout of a chauffeur—”

“I won’t always be a chauffeur—”

“You’re quite right. You’re not one now.”

“I suppose you mean I’m fired.” His tone was flat and scornful.

“Absolutely.”

“Why, you poor damn ni

The two men were facing each other, so close they were almost touching. The rest of the people in the aisle surged forward around them. Marvell insinuated himself between them, and laid a graceful hand on Reavis’s chest. “That will be about enough of that.” He omitted the “my man” tag, but it was implied. “I advise you to get out of here before I summon the police.”

“For calling a phony’s bluff?” Reavis tried to laugh, and almost succeeded. “I’d of walked out months ago if it wasn’t for Cathy. The little buzzard’s doing me a favor.”

The girl Cathy got out of her seat, her eyes bright with tears about to spill. “Go away, Pat. You mustn’t say these dreadful things to father.”

“You heard her, Reavis.” Slocum was flushed in the neck and white around the mouth. “Get out of here, and don’t come back. We’ll send your things to you.”

The tension was leaking out of the situation as Reavis, its center, gradually relaxed. He knew that he was beaten, and his shoulders showed it. He turned to look at Cathy, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Before the focus of attention could shift to me, I slid out of my $7.70 seat and into the lobby.

The photograph of the Ironist on the portico was staring unblinkingly into the afternoon sun. The offstage drama in Quinto, I told it silently, was better than the kind they rehearsed. It didn’t answer; it was lost in a dream of its own loveliness.

Chapter 3

I found a phone booth in a drugstore down the block. There was no James Slocum in the Nopal Valley section of the directory, but there was a Mrs. Olivia Slocum, presumably his mother. I made the ten-cent toll call and got a cracked dry voice which could have belonged to man or woman:

“The Slocum residence.”

“Mrs. James Slocum, please.”

There was a click on the line: “All right, Mrs. Strang. I’ll take it no my extension.”

Mrs. Strang grunted and went off the line.

“Archer speaking,” I said. “I’m in Quinto.”

“I hoped you would call. Yes?”

“Look here, Mrs. Slocum, I’m practically handcuffed. I can’t ask questions, or I’ll start talk where there isn’t any. I have no lead and no contacts. Isn’t there some way I can meet your family—your husband, at least?”

“But he has nothing to do with it. You’ll only rouse suspicion.”

“Not necessarily. If I float around without an explanation, I’ll rouse suspicion for sure. And I won’t find anything out if I can’t talk to anybody.”

“You sound discouraged,” she said.

“I was never encouraged, I told you that. Operating in a vacuum, I don’t stand much chance of helping you. Even a list of suspects—”