We stopped laughing as we went back inside and sank into the pillows.
“Why all the mystery, why those late nights?” I asked. “Do you ever go out by day?”
“Only to funerals. You see”—Constance sipped her coffee and lay back among the pillows, which resembled a kennel of dogs— “I don’t much like people. I started turning cranky young. I guess I have too many producers’ fingerprints on my skin. Anyway, it’s not bad, playing house alone.”
“What am I doing here?” I asked.
“You’re Fannie’s friend, one. And, two, you look like a good kid. Bright but brainless, I mean innocent. Those big blue eyes full of naivete. Life hasn’t got to you yet? I hope it never does. You look safe to me, and rather nice, and fun. No phys. ed., though, as they say, no phys. ed. Which means I’m not going to tackle you into the bedroom, your virginity is safe.”
“I’m no virgin.”
“No, but you sure as hell look it.”
I blushed furiously.
“You still haven’t said. Why am I here?”
Constance Rattigan put her coffee cup down and leaned forward to stare straight into my face.
“Fannie,” she said, “is frightened. Terrified. Spooked. Are you, I wonder, the one responsible?”
For a little while I had forgotten.
The drive to the beach had blown the darkness out of my head. Being in this house, standing by the pool, watching this woman dive in the sea and return, feeling the night wind on my face and the wine in my mouth had made the last forty-eight hours vanish.
I suddenly realized I hadn’t laughed really hard in a good many weeks. This strange lady’s laughter had aged me back to where I should have been: twenty-seven years old, not ninety the way I had felt getting up this morning.
“Are you the one responsible for scaring Fannie?” she repeated, and stopped.
“My God,” said Constance Rattigan. “You look as if I had just run over your pet dog.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Did I just kick you in the kishkas?”
“Kish—?”
“Meatballs. Sorry.”
She let go of me. I didn’t fall off the cliff. So she said, “It’s just, I’m protective as hell about Fannie. I don’t think you know how often I’ve been down to that ratty tenement to visit.”
“I never saw you there.”
“Sure you did, but didn’t know. One night a year ago, Cinco de Mayo, there was a mariachi Mexican Spanish Pachuco conga lineup through the halls and down through the tenement, gassed on wine and enchiladas. I headed the conga line dolled up as Rio Rita; nobody knew who I was, which is the only way to have a good time. You were at the far end of the line, out of step. We never met. After an hour I had a small chat with Fannie and vamoosed. Most of the time I arrive there at two in the morning because Fannie and I go back to Chicago Opera and Art Institute days, when I was painting and in the opera chorus free, and Fannie sang a few leads. We knew Caruso and were both skinny as rails, can you believe that? Fannie? Skinny! But what a voice! God, we were young. Well, you know the rest. I came a long way with mattress marks on my back. When the marks got too numerous, I retired to pump money here in my backyard.”
She indicated at least four oil-rig machineries heaving and sighing out back of the kitchen, wonderful pets for a good life.
“Fannie? She had a lousy love affair which cracked her permanently in half and blew her up to the size you see now. No man, not me, not life, could coax her back to beauty. We all just gave up on that and stayed friends.”
“A good friend from the sound of your voice.”
“Well, it works both ways. She’s a talented, dear, eccentric lost lady. I Chihuahua-caper to her mammoth gavotte. Lots of good honest laughs at the four-o’clock-in-the-morning world. We don’t kid each other about the facts of life. We know we’ll never come back out into it, she for her reasons, me for mine. She saw one man too close, I saw too many, quickly. Retirement takes many forms, as you can see by my disguises, as you can see by Fannie’s Montgolfier balloon shape.”
“The way you talk about men, I mean, you’re talking to a real live one here, now,” I said.
“You’re not one of them, I can tell. You couldn’t rape a chorus line, or use your agent’s desk for a bed. You couldn’t Knock your grandma downstairs to cadge the insurance. Maybe you’re a sap, I don’t know, or a fool, but I’ve come to prefer saps and fools, guys who don’t raise tarantulas or yank wings off hummingbirds. Silly writers who dream about going to Mars and never coming back to our stupid daytime world.”
She stopped, hearing herself.
“Christ, I talk a lot. Let’s get back to Fannie. She doesn’t scare often, been living in that old firetrap for twenty years now, door open to one and all, and the mayonnaise jar in hand, but now something’s wrong. She jumps when fleas sneeze. So—?”
“Last night all we did was play opera and try to joke. She didn’t say.”