Cat Chaser

5

SHE SAID, “You’re getting tired of me already.”

“What, because I said we ought to go out? Room service is okay, but it’s still room service.”

“I have to admit, George, you’re a lot more romantic than I thought you’d be.”

“I hear myself sometimes,” Moran said, “I sound like I’m about seventeen.”

She said, “You don’t look much older, except for the beard. I love your beard. I love your body.”

Even after he had told her why he was here and she was fascinated and wanted to walk the streets of his war with him, they remained in the hotel for the next two days. They needed the intimacy of being alone together, to look at each other with no one watching now and realize, no question about it, they were right. Boy, were they right. Meant for each other. They could say it and it sounded fine. They could say, I love you, earnestly, though so far only in the midst of love, perspiration glistening on their bodies, and I love you sounded pretty good, too. They lay in the sun at the hotel pool, a breeze coming off the Caribbean. She touched him and told him he could be one of the winter ballplayers. He told her she was way better looking than any of the young baseball wives, looked around, realized it wasn’t even a contest and widened the scope to include all the girl movie stars he could think of. He believed it. They talked, never having to think of things to say, and were at ease with each other in silence.

“I remember times at the club I’d see you staring off in space,” Mary said, “like you were planning to go over the wall.”

They lay side by side at the deep end of the pool, facing the afternoon sun, their lounge chairs touching.

“I got pardoned,” Moran said. “If I hadn’t, yeah, I would’ve done it. I could feel it coming.”

She said, “Can we get a few things out in the open?”

“It’s all right with me.”

“Okay. Why’d you marry Noel?”

“I think it was her heinie,” Moran said. “That high, insolent ass, like it’s got a personality all its own.”

“Are we going to only say nice things?”

“Well, you know her as well as I do. Sometimes the things that attract us are the things that sooner or later turn us off. I should’ve looked at her stuck-up ass and known.”

He turned his head to see Mary’s slender body in the yellow bikini, the delicate line from armpit to breast, her belly a shallow basin between the small-bone mounds of her hips. He wanted to jump on her.

“You asked me because you knew I was gonna ask you. Where you stand.”

“I suppose.”

“Okay, where are you?”

“Well, not too long ago I almost asked Andres for a divorce. I had the words ready, exactly what I was going to say…”

He was aware of his instant reaction: great. He didn’t tighten, begin to feel trapped. No, he liked what she was saying.

“But I chickened out.”

“How come?”

“Well… I felt sorry for him.”

Moran didn’t say anything.

“Or I felt sorry for myself-I don’t know. I thought, if I’m gonna leave, I should be going to something I want to do. But even if there was something, I don’t want to just walk out. I want to talk to him, so he’ll understand how I feel. But we don’t talk. In the six years we’ve been together”-she turned her head to look at Moran-”if there’s a gale blowing out of Biscayne Bay in the hurricane season we might get in a good exchange about the weather. We don’t even see each other that much. We have dinner together about three times a week. Half the time he doesn’t get home till late, or we meet at the club.”

“What’d you marry him for, his money?”

“I might’ve.”

“I was kidding.”

“No, you weren’t. But that may be the real reason, security,” Mary said. “At first I was fascinated by him. General Andres de Boya. In a way I thought he was cute.”

“Jesus Christ,” Moran said.

“I did, at first.” Mary pushed up on her elbow, getting into it. “Usually-well, you know-he’s very formal, he’s the boss, you have to do things his way. But then when you see a vulnerable side, just a glimpse, you realize he’s a person like everyone else.”

“Regular guy,” Moran said.

“No, he’s not a regular guy. That’s what I mean. He was a soldier in the Dominican army, worked his way up to general, then lost everything. He came to Miami with practically nothing and did it all on his own.”

“I heard he escaped with a fortune.”

“You heard wrong. He put fifteen thousand down on an apartment house in South Miami and that was everything he had.”

“You stick up for him.”

“George, what do you want to believe? That story-he came with millions on a private yacht, that’s baloney. He escaped with his life, very little else. But I know one thing, if he ever has to make a quick exit again he’s gonna be ready.”

“He keep his money under the mattress now?”

Mary paused. “It sounds funny, but to Andres it’s real life. He thinks there’s always somebody out to get him, so we have full-time security guards, armed. They never smile.”

“Well, I guess you were head of secret police for Trujillo,” Moran said, “and now you’re sitting on all that dough…”

“That was political,” Mary said, “we’re talking about the man now.”

Moran could argue the distinction-the man was still responsible for a lot of people dying-but he let it go.

“All right, you’re telling me why you married him.”

“I’m trying to think of a good reason,” Mary said. “I was twenty-eight and all the good guys were taken. And he talked me into it.”

“I hope you can do better than that.”

“I was ready to get married. I didn’t like what I was doing. My dream, always, was to get married some day.” She paused, thinking. “He’s not bad-looking really, and he’s very romantic.”

“Jesus Christ,” Moran said.

“Well, he thinks he is, but most of it’s in Spanish. He’s very, you know, serious, a heavy breather.”

“I’m not gonna say anything,” Moran said.

“On the other hand he’s extremely cold, aloof,” Mary said. “Sometimes smirky. If I want to see him I practically have to get an appointment. But he’s a rock, George.”

“I won’t argue with you there.”

“He’s absolutely reliable. If Andres says he’s going to do something, believe it. Whatever it is.”

“He wants to buy the Coconuts,” Moran said. He had told Mary about Andres’s sister and the piano player, without going into much detail. “He came-I was gonna say yesterday, but it was three days ago. Anyway he made an offer and I said, ‘You trying to get rid of me, Andres? Come on, what’s your game?’ “

It brought her upright. “You didn’t. What’s your game?”

“Listen, the other day I beat a guy playing tennis, a young hotshot, I said to him, ‘You’re all right, kid.’ I’m starting to say things I’ve always felt like saying. But try to get anything out of your husband-I think you could punch him, he wouldn’t make a sound,” Moran said. “Maybe when you married him you thought you could change him. Turn him into a teddy bear. He’s not at all cute, I’ll tell you, but you thought you could make him cute.”

“No, you’re wrong,” Mary said. She eased back to lie flat on the lounge again. “I was working in that law office typing one profit-sharing plan after another, pages and pages of figures, pension plans, trust funds, all due at five o’clock, always, and I had to get out. Andres came along-it was his lawyer I worked for. He’d divorced his first two wives. He has four grown children, a girl who’s married and lives in California, three sons in Madrid who’re in business together-those are the legitimate ones. He let his mistress go… I think. And I decided he was fascinating. I thought the difference between us might make it all the more interesting, maybe even fun. I thought, well, assuming there’s a person under that cold, formal exterior, why don’t I try to bring him out?”

“How’d you do?”

“Well, the only thing I can figure out,” Mary said, “he puts on the front so no one will know what a real asshole he is.”

“So walk away,” Moran said. “What’s the problem?”

“I told you, I want him to understand why I’m leaving. I don’t want him to think it’s for any other reason than we shouldn’t have got married in the first place. We made a mistake and I want him to realize it.”

“What other reason is there? You don’t like him, that’s all.”

“There’s a good one,” Mary said. “I signed a prenuptial agreement. I didn’t want to but Andres insisted. In the agreement it says if the marriage ends in divorce, for any reason, I’m to be given a flat settlement of two million dollars.”

Moran said, “You didn’t want to sign it?”

“I felt like it was an inducement. I didn’t want to make a deal with him. I wanted to marry him. I might’ve been dumb, but I was sincere.”

“Well, it was his idea,” Moran said. “But if you’re worried about what he thinks-I mean you want to prove you’re still sincere, then don’t take the money.”

“Yeah, except that I like being rich.”

Moran studied her face, the fine bone structure, the delicate line of her nose, knowing the face would change and he would still want to look at it for a long time to come.

“You got a problem,” he said.

They were silent now. His gaze moved past her to the shrubs that bordered the south end of the hotel grounds. After several moments he said, “My first night here, I slept in a hole. Right over where that hedge is…”