Death of a Citizen

CHAPTER 5

A SHORT, dark individual in an immaculate white jacket was presiding over the refreshment table with the grace, dignity and relaxed assurance of an old family retainer,' although I knew he was hired for the occasion as I'd been meeting him at Santa Fe parties for years.

"Vodka?" he was saying. "No, no, I will not do it, seсorita! A Martini is a Martini and you are a guest in this house. Por favor, do not ask me to serve a guest of the Darrels the fermented squeezings of potato peelings and other garbage!"

Barbara Herrera answered the man laughingly in

Spanish, and they tossed it back and forth, and she agreed to settle for another honest, capitalist cocktail instead of switching to the bastard variety from the land of Communism. After he'd filled her glass, I stuck mine out to be replenished from the same shaker. The girl glanced around, smiled, and swung about to face me with a clink of bracelets and a swish of petticoats.

I gestured towards her costume. "Santa Fe is grateful to you for patronizing local industry, Miss Herrera."

She laughed. "Do I look too much like a walking junk shop? I didn't have anything else to do this afternoon, and the stores just fascinated me. I lost my head, I guess."

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"California," she said.

"That's a big state," I said, "and you can keep all of it."

She smiled. "Now, that isn't nice."

"I've spent a few months in Hollywood from time to time," I said. "I couldn't take it. I'm used to breathing air."

She laughed. "Now you're boasting, Mr. Helm. At least we get a little oxygen with our smog. That's more than you can say up here at seven thousand feet. I lay awake all last night gasping for breath."

With her warm dark skin and wide cheekbones, she looked better in her squaw dress than most. I looked down at her, and sighed inwardly, and braced myself to do my duty as an elder statesman of the writing profession.

I said in kindly tones, "You say you've been doing some writing, Miss Herrera?"

Her face lighted up. "Why, yes, and I've been wanting to talk to somebody about… It's at my motel,

Mr. Helm. There's a rather pleasant bar next door. I know you're leaving in the morning, but if you and your wife could just stop on your way home and have a drink while I run over and get it… It's just a short story, it wouldn't take you more than a few minutes, and I'd appreciate it so much if you'd just glance through it and tell me…''

New York is full of editors who are paid to -read stories. All it takes to get their reaction is the postage. But these kids keep shoving the products of their sweat and imagination under the noses of friends, relatives, neighbors, and anybody they can track down who ever published three lines of lousy verse. I don't get it. Maybe I'm just a hardened cynic, but when I was breaking into the racket I sure as hell didn't waste time and effort showing my work to anybody who didn't have the dough to buy and the presses to print it on-not even my wife. Being an unpublished writer is ridiculous enough; why make it worse by showing the stuff around?

I tried to tell the girl this; I tried to tell her that even if I liked her story, there was nothing I could do about it, and if I didn't like it, what difference did it make? I wasn't the guy who was going to buy it. But she was persistent, and before I got rid of her I'd consumed two more Martinis and promised to drop by and have a look at her little masterpiece in the morning, if I had time. As I was planning to leave before daybreak, I didn't really expect to have time, and she probably knew it; but I wasn't going to spoil my last evening at home reading her manuscript or anybody else's.

She left me at last, heading across the room to say goodbye to her host and hostess. It took me a while to locate Beth in one of the rear sitting rooms of the big, sprawling house. We've got plenty of space in this southwestern country, and few houses, no matter how large, are more than one story high, which is just as well. You wouldn't want to have to climb stairs at our altitude. When I found my wife, she was talking to Tina.

I paused in the doorway to look at them. Two goodlooking and well behaved and smartly dressed party guests, holding their drinks like talismans, they were chatting away in the bright manner of women who've just met and already don't like each other very well.

"Yes, he was in Army Public Relations during the war," I heard Beth say as I came forward. "A jeep turned over on him while he was out on assignment, near Paris I think, and injured him quite badly. I was doing USO in Washington when he came there for treatment. That's how we met. Hello, darling, we're talking about you."

She looked nice, and kind of young and innocent, even in her Fifth Avenue cocktail outfit. I found that I wasn't annoyed with her any more; and apparently she'd forgiven me, also. Looking at her, I was very glad I'd had the good sense to marry her when I had the chance, but there was a feeling of guilt, too. There always had been, but it was stronger tonight. I'd really had no business marrying anybody.

Tina had turned to smile at me. "I was just asking your wife what you were a celebrity at, Mr. Helm."

Beth laughed. "Don't ask him what name he writes under, Mrs. Loris, or he won't be fit to live with the rest of the evening."

Tina was still smiling, watching me. "So you with in public relations during the war. That must have been quite interesting, but wasn't it a bit risky at times?" Her eyes were laughing at me.

I said, "Those jeeps we ran around in caused more casualties than enemy action, in our branch of service, Mrs. Loris. I still shudder when I see one. Combat fatigue, you know."

"And after the war you just started to write?"

Her eyes did not stop laughing at me. She'd undoubtedly been supplied with my complete dossier when she received her orders. She probably knew more about me than I knew about myself. But it amused her to make me read off my lines in front of my wife.

I said, "Why, I'd done some newspaper work before I went into the service; it had got me interested in southwestern history. After what I saw during the war, even if I never got into combat… Well, I decided that men fighting mud and rain and Nazis couldn't be so very different from men fighting dust and wind and Apaches. Anyway, I went back to my job on the paper and started turning out fiction in my spare time. Beth had a job, too. After a couple of years, my stuff just started to sell, that's all."

Tina said, "I think you're a very lucky man, Mr. Helm, to have such a helpful and understanding wife." She turned her smile on Beth. "Not every struggling author has that advantage."

It was the old behind-every-man-there's-a-woman line that we get all the time, and Beth winked at me as she said something suitably modest in reply, but I didn't find it funny tonight. There was that patronizing arrogance in Tina's voice and bearing that I knew very well: she was the hawk among the chickens, the wolf among the sheep.

Then there was a movement behind me, and Loris appeared, carrying his big hat and Tina's fur wrap.

"Sorry to break this up," he said, "but we're having dinner with some people across town. Ready, dear?"

"Yes," she said, "I'm ready, as soon as I say goodnight to the Darrels."

"Well, do it quick," he said. "We're late now."

He was obviously trying to tell her that something urgent required their attention; and she got the message, all right, but she spent just a moment longer adjusting her furs and giving us a pleasant smile, like any woman who's damn well not going to let herself be hurried by an impatient husband. Then they were going off together, and Beth took my arm.

"I don't like her," Beth said, "but did you pipe the minks?"

"I offered you mink the last time we were flush," I said. "You said you'd rather put the money into a new car."

"I don't like him, either," she said. "I think he hates small children and pulls wings off flies."

Sometimes my wife, for all her naive and girlish looks, can be as bright as anybody. As we walked together towards the front of the house, past little groups of people grimly determined to keep the party going no matter what time it was or who went home, I wondered what had happened to send Tina and her partner rushing off into the night. Well, it wasn't my problem. I hoped I could keep it that way.