#008: From the Stream

I did not have time to fully assimilate the perplexing developments with Karen because another problem was awaiting me in my room—in the person of Marcia Kalinsky.

She was wearing a mini version of the terry cloth robe that was assuming proportions as uniform of the day in this household—and when I say "mini" I mean hip-length and obviously designed to enhance rather than conceal the feminine charms of the wearer. I have already noted on these pages the fact that Marcia was remarkably preserved and no slouch whatever in the feminine charms department—but I must add here that the casually belted minirobe, worn over nothing more than the bottom half of a skimpy bikini bathing suit, added nothing but strain to an already overstrained day.

I left the door wide open.

She closed it.

I kept on my feet and moving, trying to maintain a safe distance between polarized bodies.

She kept moving, also, continually closing that distance.

This was the mode of physical action during the ensuing conversation.

She: "Where the hell have you been? I've been waiting for damned near thirty minutes."

Me: "Sorry, I didn't know. I would have rushed right back. Uh, did we have an appointment?"

She: "Don't get cute. This is no time for cute. I want to know where you've been."

Me: "Not that it is any of your business, but purely because I have nothing to conceal, I have been with my client. Karen is my client. She is the sole reason—"

She: "Everything that goes on in this house is my business. Karen is my business. That girl is sick. Sick, sick. She's just so much raw meat for sluts like you. I want you out of here. And damned quick."

Me: "There seems to be a conflict here. Your husband has ordered me to stay for dinner. And I have been retained by the lady of the—"

She, furiously: "That bastard! Can't you see what he's doing? He's setting you up, asshole! Setting you up!"

I got back to the door and opened it, pointedly. "Let's continue this at dinner."

She hit the door with a straight arm to send it banging shut again. "We'll continue it right here! Did Terry offer you a contract?"

I was getting steamed. I went to the bar, found and lit a cigarette, only then noticed the half-empty fifth of Jim Beam and equally half-empty tumbler of booze-rocks. Hers, no doubt. The lady was deep into the cups, which perhaps explained her behavior.

I turned to her with a new try at patience only to find her pelvis riding my hip, and the balance of the conversation took place in that attitude.

Me: "You're right. It's no time for cute. Terry did not offer me a contract, no, he conferred one upon me. I gather it is the same type of indentured service conferred upon everyone who stumbles into this spiderweb. I'll bet that you are under a marital contract with identical provisions. How much free and clear per day are you getting, Marcia?"

She: "Not nearly enough. But that is all going to come tumbling down next week, so don't lose any sleep over it. I still want you out of here."

Me: "Not nearly as much as I want me out of here, lady. So don't you lose any sleep over that. Why will it tumble down?"

She: "The ride is over, that's all, the end is here. And I say thank God to that. But I'll still scratch your eyes out if you try moving in on that girl."

Me: "Look again, Marcia, that girl is no longer a girl. She's a bona fide woman, certifiably so, with a right to choose her own company. But if your concern is real, then that makes us allies, sort of. What sort of sick is she?"

She: 'The sort of sick that makes her a natural for con women like you. Sick between the thighs, or hadn't you noticed, and don't try to say you haven't."

Me: "What you call sick others would call a basic human need—or don't you have those kinds of needs too?"

She: "Sure I have that kind of need. So what are you—a superjockette? Big lover? Think you can handle eight to ten tussles a day?"

Me: "Do it right the first time, Marcia, who needs the other seven to nine?"

She: "I don't know. When do you want to show me?"

Me: "Well, there probably would not be time before dinner."

She: "Keep your dance card open, lover. Meet you back here at ten."

She snared her drink and headed for the door, opened it, turned back to say, "I can hardly wait."

I asked her, at that distance, "What is he setting me up for, Marcia?"

She giggled, waved the drink at me, and replied in departure, "Tell you at ten."

It would have been a great seduction routine if she had been wearing leather and dragging a whip—and certainly there had been an element of seduction to that entire encounter—but I had to vote for it as only a secondary motive for that visit to my bedroom.

The whole thing was beginning to spin around in my head, but without any clear vortex. Oh, sure, you are way ahead of me and thinking how obvious it ought to be by now. There have been forty thousand B-movies and God only knows how many television melodramas built around identical situations. We all must surely know, at this point, that Kalinsky has been looting the estate and milking the trusts for all they are worth and that, with Karen about to come into her own, she is probably also coming into mortal danger.

But I was immersed in a real-life situation and I have discovered that real life is not as malleable as fiction.

No one is that much in charge here. There's no script to follow and no director shouting instructions to a cast that is willing to blindly follow. Real life is not scripted, it is usually played by ear, and few of us ever know exactly why we do what we do or say what we say.

Fiction is economical, has to be, everything pointed toward a desired effect. Real life is luxurious, no matter what your station; the options are endless and occurring moment by moment, and very damned few things in the individual lifestream seem pointed toward anything in particular.

I cannot approach real life with fictional devices and neither can you.

So bear with me, here, and do not leap ahead to a synthetic conclusion. I could not afford to, even though everything inside of me was yelling at me to get the hell out.

What was the real reason behind Marcia's visit?

Was she really concerned for Karen or was that just a smoke screen—and, if a smoke screen, why would she feel it important to lay one around me?

Did she let it slip that big changes were arriving in the coming week, or had it been her intention all along to drop that information on me?

Had she really been trying to drive me away—or had she merely been manipulating me into a challenge to stay?

What was the personal relationship with her husband—and was the sexplay just another smoke screen of some type, or was she really all that contemptuous of her marriage?

What, exactly, was "sick" about Karen—and, to whatever extent she may be so, how much of that was being deliberately engineered into her by this very strange household?

Why had a shrink been brought aboard? Out of genuine concern for an ailing heiress?—or as part of an elaborate plan to certify her as mentally incompetent and thus forestall a turnover of power?

And, if I could take Marcia at face value, exactly what was I being "set up" for?

I haul all of this out for inspection here so that you may consider the same puzzles that I had to consider at that moment and so that you may understand the frame of my mind while I was getting into a tuxedo that had been tailored for me during the hour or so before that moment, upon the orders of a man whom I had first met maybe two hours earlier and who, ironically enough, was married to a lady who had just metaphorically invited me to screw her brains out immediately after dinner.

I also give it to you here lest it all be lost sight of in the rapidly cascading developments of that evening at the Highland estate.

It was only about twenty minutes past seven, but I dressed early to check the fit. I was standing at the mirror inspecting same when I suddenly became aware of eyes upon me. My gaze went straight to the French doors. The sun had set and the balcony outside was cloaked in deep shadows, but I saw her as clearly as if she had been dipped in luminous paint.

It was Karen's ethereal companion and the expression on that tormented face was clearly pleading with me for something.

The apparition turned, showing itself in clear three-dimensional profile, to gaze down upon the patio, back to me, then once again onto the patio, as though summoning my attention to something there.

I did not give it a second thought nor a moment's hesitation but moved quickly to the balcony. The apparition had winked out with my first step forward, but I could still sense presence out there.

That particular presence, however, was not now the focus of my attention.

The focus was immediately below. Two men stood at the patio bar in twilight, a woman in an evening dress was walking toward the pool—and in the pool, submerged in deep water, a nude female figure floated facedown.

There are moments in the stream when the thinking mind stands aside and something deeply human yet more than human takes over the motor nerves to send a living creature sprawling into personal peril with no thought whatever for the self. I believe that such moments explain those singular, selfless acts of human heroism.

Of course I was thinking no such thoughts at that moment, and I am laying no claim to heroism. Quite the reverse, I am merely explaining a really stupid action. I have never been big on watersports, naval experience notwithstanding, and had never shown any particular form as a diver. I do not recall gauging the distance or extrapolating angle for depth; I remember only pushing with all the leg I had against the railing of that second-story balcony and launching myself headlong toward that floating body, the initial shock of penetration and a weird wandering apology to God knows who for immersing the tux, then the warm-cold naked flesh of Marcia Kalinsky as I fought the limp form toward a living environment.