The Switch

Chapter 13

MELANIE WORE A LONG STRIPED ARAB DRESS, A HEAD-band and one of Frank's $30 ties for a belt. She seldom wore underwear or shoes. She was right there ready--practically at all times--lying on the sofa reading about people with style in W, a list of those who had it.

"Diana Vreeland."

"Never heard of her."

"Betty Bacall."

"You mean Lauren Bacall?" Frank said.

"Same one," Melanie said. "Yves St. Laurent." "He's the guy that makes clothes, women's clothes."

"Georgia O'Keefe."

"Sounds like a stripper."

"Wrong. Giancarlo Giannini."

"Opera singer."

"Wrong. Jeanne Moreau."

"He's a ... writer."

"She's an actress. Jerome Robbins."

"Who knows?"

"I'm giving you just the easy ones. Okay, Pat Buckley."

"He's the one, he was gonna punch that fag, what's his name, on TV."

"Pat's his wife ... I think. Loulou de la Falaise." "For Christ sake," Frank said.

They were in Frank Dawson's apartment, back from the casino. Melanie had won four-hundredand-something playing roulette. Frank had dropped $3,200 at craps, not even shooting, betting against the shooter. He'd forgotten to call home and decided the hell with it, it was too late now, bedtime. Frank had his white loafers off, his shirt unbuttoned, relaxing, having one final Scotch. Melanie let her Coke sit on the coffee table. She lay curled up in a corner of the sectional sofa, holding W against her raised knees and taking his picture. He could see the underside of her long young thighs all the way to her exposed can. Or he could turn his head and look through the open sliding doors to the balcony and see imported palm trees in moonlight. They had brought them over from Florida to line the fairways, coconut palms that were slowly being overgrown with local scrub pine. The groundskeepers would take a couple of hacks at the growth with machetes and stand around smoking cigarettes. It was getting harder to hire good people. The government in Nassau was crazy. He had to get out of here pretty soon. Move the account to Switzerland before the government took over everything and turned Fairway Manor into a post office or something.

"Jack Nicholson you know. Alain Resnais." "Never heard of him."

"Here's one. Nicky Lauda."

"I don't know."

"He's a race-car driver. Jean Renoir."

"I don't want to play anymore."

There were things he didn't like about Melanie. She ought to comb her hair. She ought to clean up her language when they were out--sitting in the King's Inn cocktail lounge and seeing everybody turn around and look when she said, "Those fuckers, what do they know?" Things like that. She ought to bring her own toothbrush when she came here and quit using all his tranquilizers.

"One more. Yasmin Khan."

Still, Frank believed Melanie was one in a million. Maybe she was. At any given time there could be ten thousand or more healthy young Melanies lying on the beaches of the world, sitting at chic sidewalk tables with their backpacks stowed away, and each would be one in a million; though Frank would never realize there were so many. Melanie was from Santa Barbara, a California girl. She had been all over the Mediterranean, from Marbella to the Middle East. She had lived with a Hollywood director Frank had never heard of while the director was shooting a western in Spain. She had bunked with Italian film people at a Cannes Festival, moved onto Rome and Cinecitta with a second-assistant cameraman--bad for the image, moving down in the ranks--escaped to Piraeus and did the Greek islands on the motor-sailer of a dark little man who imported John Deere tractors, skipped down to Eilat--Israel's Miami Beach on the Gulf of Aqaba--with another film crew, no one in particular. Then, from Eilat to Copenhagen to London to Barbados to Freeport, Grand Bahama, where she'd finally had enough of her British photo-journalist friend, his quaaludes and rum, his cold sweats and crazy-talk in the middle of the night, and connected with Frank at Tano Beach over a bowl of conch chowder and a pint of dark, ten months ago. Mr. Frank A. Dawson from Detroit, with a bank account and development interests in the Bahamas. Melanie could read Frank's mind, anticipate his moods and keep him turned on without shifting into third gear. After some of the others, Frank was like a rest stop.

"George Balanchine."

"I'm gonna take that goddamn paper, whatever it is, and burn it."

"Meany. What do you want to do, fuck?"

"Well, since we're going to bed--" He couldn't get over the way she talked, but tried to react casually.

"You want to do the Florentine thing again?" "What one was that?"

"You know, where we sit facing each other, my legs are over yours--"

"Yeah, that's a good one," Frank said. She was so offhand about it. Then in bed she'd talk real dirty, telling him what to do to her. Mickey never said a word. She'd lie there, get a little movement going, but not much. He'd roll over and she'd go in the bathroom for awhile, come back and ask him what he wanted for breakfast in the morning.

He said to Melanie, "I've filed."

She lowered the newspaper with her knees. "You have? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I talked to my lawyer Friday. He said it'll go out, she'll be served with the papers probably by Tuesday. Tomorrow."

"That's why you came early."

"Give her some time alone to think about it." "What's she gonna do?"

"What do you mean, what's she gonna do? It's no-fault. She doesn't have anything to say about it."

"I mean how's she gonna take it?" Melanie said.

"I don't know. I don't really care." Frank got up. He went into the kitchen and came back with a fresh drink.

Melanie was waiting. "Will she be surprised?" "I guess so."

"Will she cry ... ask you not to do it?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. I think she'll go along with it. Oh, she'll say things to her friends, suck around for a little sympathy. Poor little thing--that prick, how could he? After she's been so good to him."

Melanie sat up, drawing her knees to her and wrapping her arms around them. "What's she like?"

"She's--" Frank had to think. He sipped his Scotch. "She's--what can I say? She's just kinda there. Nice looking, good figure. Everybody tells her how cute she is, you know, how does she stay so slim, all that."

"She good in bed?"

"Well, it's not really a big thing to her."

"No pun intended, huh?" Melanie said.

"It's not important to her. The way she was brought up, like a lot of the women we know, sex is something ... they look at it as something you have to do when you're married. Something you have to put up with."

"That's weird," Melanie said.

"Well, you weren't brought up like that. How old were you, the first time you got laid?"

"Fourteen, I think. Yeah, fourteen. But I was giving hand jobs before that."

"My wife, these women we know, they lead a very sheltered life," Frank said. "The big thing they talk about at the club--well, some of them, they play golf, they're pretty active. But the others, along with my wife, the big thing to talk about would be what they're gonna cook for dinner."

"That's really weird," Melanie said. "I'd eat out."

"You don't eat out every night," Frank said. "No, you sit at the table, try and make conversation. I tell her about the business. It could be a problem I'm having with a sub-contractor, like trying to get the cement guy to come in when I need him--"

"Yeah?" Melanie said.

"She listens, but she doesn't give a shit. I try and keep it light, tell her about my round of golf maybe if I played that day. No response."

"No response," Melanie said. "What's she interested in? You mind my asking?"

"No, I don't mind. What's she interested in?" Frank thought again. "How much I drink. She says, we go to a party and I'm a little high, she says your problem, you don't count your drinks. I say I did too count 'em. I had twenty-eight, exactly."

Melanie nodded and laughed.

"She doesn't think it's funny. I tell a joke, you know, like the one the guy gets bit on the pecker by the rattlesnake?"

Melanie grinned. "Yeah?"

"She doesn't think it's funny. Oh, she laughs. If other people are there she laughs, but she doesn't think it's funny. She's more interested in is the house clean? Or, where's Bo? It's late and Bo's not home yet. I say to her it's only ten-thirty, for Christ sake, he'll be home."

"What about your son? What's gonna happen?"

"That's something we'll have to discuss along with the settlement," Frank said. "She'll probably keep Bo, the mother, you know, I'm not gonna argue with that. It's all right, he and I'll see each other."

"I'd like to meet him," Melanie said.

"You probably will, you don't pack that big canvas bag and take off somewhere."

"Leave my place? I'm getting to be a homebody," Melanie said. "I've planted flowers--Hey, there was a guy renting the next apartment. He was there a couple of weeks with his wife. I was outside for awhile, I went in, I just got in and he knocks on my door. I answer and he goes, 'I'll give you $500 if you'll take your clothes off and let me look at your body.' No shit."

"Just look? Come on--"

"No shit. I go, 'Hey, get fucked, okay?' Creepy guy--"

Yeah, Frank thought. She'd have the Arab dress off, or the string bikini, before the door closed. That was the only thing that bothered him. He had more than enough money to keep her happy, but she'd still fool around. He noticed the way she looked at young guys with flat stomachs and nice builds. They could be Bahamian, it didn't matter. If it ever bothered him too much or he ever caught her with somebody he'd end it, throw her out. He'd have to. It was her age. Pretty soon though, when she got to be twenty-two, twenty-three, she'd begin looking ahead and settle down. Growing flowers, that was a good sign.

They were in bed when the telephone rang, in semidarkness: lamplight from the living room on the floor; moonlight on the bed, the imported palm trees stirring outside the window. Frank raised his eyes, past the mound of her belly, past round pale breasts (her tummy-tum and her ninnies, he called them), to her face on the pillow. He raised his head then and her eyes opened.

She said, "Are we gonna answer it?"

"I don't know." Frank held his position, his can rounding over the foot of the bed, toes dug into the shag carpeting, a freestyler ready to dive. The phone continued to ring.

"You want me to?" Melanie said.

"No ... I guess I better."

It could be Bo, something about the tennis camp he didn't like. It could be Mickey--because he'd forgotten to call earlier. Something about the car, playing helpless. Where should she get it fixed? Frank walked into the living room naked, scratching his crotch, feeling a little heft but nothing like he'd had before. That was all right, Melanie could get it back with one touch. She liked to touch it and talk to it, get down there and say dirty things to it softly. It was coming back already ...

Then began to shrivel fast as the voice on the phone said, "How you doing, man? With that fine young lady you got with you--"

"Who is this?"

"Hold the line. Your wife wants to speak with you."