Kissing the Beehive

"Okay, so Pee Pee the cop and the other guy came and you were there with the body."

"Right. Joe's up on the bank, I'm down on the beach and here come the sirens. It was so typical. There were two police cars in town and both arrived with sirens screaming. Couldn't they have just gotten into one car –"

"Dad, the story?"

"The cops arrived and took over. Cristello ordered me away from the body. A minute ago she was mine but now she was public property. Pee Pee made me climb up the bank and give him a statement. I thought that was the coolest thing – I was actually giving my statement to the cops! It was just like on Dragnet or Naked City, my favorite television shows. I could see Pee Pee was jealous because he kept asking me ridiculous questions like, 'What do you mean, you saw a shirt in the water?' and, 'What were you doing by the river anyway?'

"What did he expect you to say? You were only a kid!"

"Exactly. That's why he was jealous. Cops in small towns wait all their lives to find a murder victim. Now two dopey kids had stumbled on one and all Pee Pee could do was take our statements. It was great. So we gave them while waiting for an ambulance to arrive from the town hospital. Cristello got a tarpaulin out of the back of the patrol car and covered her body. I remember that moment very well – it was as if I was saying goodbye to her. For all intents and purposes I was, because when the ambulance got there, the men took the body away quickly and I never saw it again.

"We had to ride in Pee Fee's car to the station house and give our statements again. When we got in, the radio was on and the disc jockey was saying, 'And now what you've all been waiting for: the new song by the Beatles, "A Hard Day's Night." ' It was the first time I ever heard it. Since then, whenever it comes on, I think of that day."

"Did they find out who did it?"

"I don't know for sure. Her boyfriend from college was convicted and sent away to jail but there were a lot of rumors afterward. Plus we had our own ideas and you know how kids talk. The story that went out to the public was that the night before, she had gone down to the river with the guy she was dating. He hit her on the head, panicked, and threw her body into the river. That's all."

"Why didn't you try to find out? You guys were the ones who found her!" Cass sounded indignant we hadn't followed up on it.

"I know, and we did try, but no one would tell us anything. Especially not the cops. Not a word."

"That's really strange. Who was she?"

"Pauline Ostrova." I thought about the dead girl a moment, trying to frame what to say to make the description right. "You know, no matter how small a town is, you can usually find at least a couple of very good and very bad kids in it."

Cass put up a hand to stop me. "Wait! Let me guess – Pauline Ostrova was . . . very good. All A's, editor of the yearbook and dated the captain of the football team."

"No. Much more interesting than that. I didn't know her well because she was a few years ahead of me in school. She had already graduated by that time but was still legendary because she was both. Completely wild, she had a reputation nine miles long. The word was she slept with whoever she liked, drank like an Irishman and would do anything on a dare. But she was also brilliant and had a full scholarship to Swarthmore."

"Swarthmore? Swarthmore's harder to get into than Harvard!"

"That's why she was so amazing. God only knows what she would have become if she'd lived. There were so many contrasting Pauline stories floating around when I was in school, you never knew which to believe. She must have been something."

"But you didn't know her?"

"Not really. Once in a while I'd see her driving by in a car or walking down the street. But the stories made her so much larger than life that I could only stare at her a second before I had to look away. It was like looking at the sun. Your eyes would burn out if you looked too long."

"I can't believe you didn't find out how she died."

I waited a dramatic moment and then said triumphantly, "That, my pearl, is what I am about to do."

She took a quick breath. "What do you mean?"

I was going to play this one for all the effect I could, especially in front of my favorite audience. I walked over to a sideboard and took out the photograph from Pauline's senior-class yearbook I'd borrowed from the high school library. I'd had it copied and then enlarged. I brought it to Cass and propped it in front of her. "Pauline Ostrova."

She took the eight-by-ten and looked at it a long time before speaking. I watched her face to see if I could decipher what she was thinking. As usual, nothing showed because nothing would until she'd made up her mind. I knew my daughter well enough to know she didn't like any kibitzing until she was good and ready to pass judgment. "Tall or short?"

"Kind of tall, as I remember."

"Where'd you get the picture?"

"It's her senior-year portrait. Out of an old yearbook."

She shook her head. "Her face is so small. And look at the teeth – they're tiny and perfect. I could imagine her being the class brain from this picture, but not the other. Not if this was the only picture I ever saw of her. Do you have others?"

"Not yet, but I'm working on it."

Cass looked at the picture again. "She looks too sweet to be dead."

That evening I brought her to the railroad station. While we were waiting for her train to arrive, she told me a story that stuck in my mind like a piece of chewing gum on the bottom of my shoe.

One of her friends' mother was an airline stewardess. She was taking a shuttle bus from London out to the airport when they hit a bad traffic jam. Apparently the woman is very good looking. During the ride, she and this handsome well-dressed guy across the aisle were making heavy eye contact. But the whole time he was also talking nonstop on a portable telephone and from what she overheard, he was in the middle of pulling off a big deal. She was already late and the bus wasn't moving. Her flight was going to take off soon and finally it was clear she wasn't going to make it on time. Desperate, she went over to the sexy guy and asked if she could borrow his phone to call the airline and tell them about the delay. The guy sputtered a minute and then said very sheepishly that he'd like to help her, but the phone was a fake.

After putting Cass on the train back to Manhattan, I sat in the car and looked at my hands on the steering wheel. Mr. Telephone gave me the creeps because his story sounded too much like mine. I had been walking around pretending I was a successful big shot too, when in fact I was a stuck buckaroo with a mediocre novel sitting on my desk, staring at me like a gargoyle every time I entered the room. What if I was finished as a writer? There were too many stories about novelists who just dried up one day and never found another drop inside. The idea of writing Pauline's story excited me, but what if that came out flat and lifeless too? I'd have no excuses then.

My still ringers began drumming and jumping around on the wheel. What if? What if? I didn't need any more doubts in my life, but sitting there alone on a pretty Sunday evening in summer with nothing to do, the what-if's poured out of my brain like a swarm of killer bees.

There was a large billboard on a wall advertising a new kind of yogurt. It pictured a beautiful female hand holding a silvery spoon with a blop of violet yummy on the tip. The tag line read, "Heaven is only a spoonful away." Looking at it, I suddenly remembered Spoon, Cassandra's girlfriend who'd had her vagina tattooed. One tattoo led to another and reaching into my back pocket for my wallet, I took out the bunch of calling cards I kept there. Shuffling through them, I found Veronica Lake's with the picture of the tattooed Russian criminal. I looked at it a few seconds, considered what other prospects I had for the night ahead, and picked up the telephone.