Vega said. “He’s very useful. Especially with a gang of teenage girls. You put one of his records on and suddenly you’ve got—cooperation.” She emphasized the word and smiled. “They walk around the studio like so many duchesses—just what I want. I used to play Bing Crosby for them but all it got me was a slouch and a lot of behind-the-hands giggling. Now I play crap and suddenly they’re ladies.” She turned to Cleve. “Explain that to me, brother,” she said. “You know all about ladies.”
Cleve ran a finger over his moustache in the wrong direction. “Simple,” he said. “You have one rule: treat a bitch like a duchess and a duchess like a bitch. Never fails.”
“What has that got to do with Elvis Presley?”
“You didn’t ask me about Elvis Presley.”
“Cleve, are you drunk?” Vega said. “It’s against the family rules. You can’t be. We never get drunk,” she explained to Beth and Charlie. “Limber, but never drunk.”
“You’re right.” Cleve ordered another round and when the drinks came he stood up and Beth saw that he really was pretty high. “A toast,” he remarked, “to my charming sister, who is thirty-nine years old today. For the fifth time.” He glanced down at her and Vega smiled seraphically at the ceiling. “Her company is charming,” Cleve went on, while heads turned to grin at him from across the room, “her face is beautiful, her manners are perfect. Thank God I don’t have to live with her. Vega, darling, stand up and take a bow.”
Vega stood up with a lovely smile and told him tenderly, “Go to hell.” They both sat down and drank to that while Jean laughed anxiously.
“They’re always like that,” Jean said, “It strikes me so funny.”
Beth wanted to put a gag on her. Jean only wanted to make it seem friendly, teasing. Everybody in the Everglades had heard her husband and his sister. She wanted them all to know it wasn’t serious.
But Beth liked to think they really hated each other, for some weird romantic reason. It gave an edge to the scene that excited her.
They ordered their meal and Vega, as always, ordered with them. Beth wondered why she bothered. Maybe it was just to give the men an extra helping. Maybe it was to ease her conscience about her drinking. At least if she had a plate of food in front of her she could always eat; she had a choice. If she didn’t order anything her only choice would be to drink, and the people with her would take it for granted she was a lush. That would never do, even when she was with her own friends, her own family, who knew the truth anyway. It just didn’t go well with her elegant exterior, her control.
So she ordered food, and ate one bite. It was a sort of ritual that comforted her and shut up the worriers in the party who tried to force French fries or buttered squash down her. When they had all finished she could divide her meal among the men unobtrusively.
Beth yearned to ask Vega how old she really was, but she didn’t dare. She wondered at her own curiosity. Everything about Vega seemed valuable and interesting that evening. The glamorous clothes, the strange feud with Cleve, the dramatic entrance, the illnesses, the modeling.
I wonder how she’d like being a suburban housewife, she mused, and almost laughed aloud. Vega, with kids. Vega doing dishes. Vega, with—God forbid—a husband! On some women all the feminine ornaments and virtues only look out of place. Those women seem complete in themselves, and so it was with Vega. Beth couldn’t imagine her, sleek and tall and with a hint of ferocity beneath her civilized veneer, being domesticated by any man. There was something icily virginal beneath her sophistication that made Beth doubt whether Vega had ever given herself to a man.
Vega opened Beth’s birthday gift to her while the rest of them ate. “How did you know?” she said, so quietly that Beth almost missed it.
“It’s only a book,” Beth murmured.
“You picked it out yourself. I’ve been wanting to read it, too.”
It was such a personal exchange, almost intimate, that Beth was taken aback. Vega treated the book like a private present from Beth—as if Charlie, who after all paid for it and wrote his name on the card with his wife’s, had nothing whatever to do with it.
Beth found herself oddly drawn to this lovely, rather secretive woman; to the warmth of her voice and the way she spoke. Vega articulated carefully, conserving the small quota of air in her one remaining lung. And yet, her voice carried. She had turned the handicap into an asset, learning to develop and project her voice with the skill of a musician. It was pleasant to hear her talk, and she arranged her breathing so artfully that one was never aware that it was a chore, or that her very life’s breath came to her in half doses.
At the end of the evening the three women went to the powder room together. Beth found herself impatient with Jean, wanting her out of the way.
What for? she thought, amused at herself. And still her impatience persisted. She stood next to Vega at the mirror while Jean leaned against the wall and waited for them to finish with their makeup. Beth wanted to say something, something memorable and witty and complimentary to Vega, but her mind was too busy admiring the woman. She only stared at Vega’s large brown eyes and parted lips and puzzled over her.
“You know,” said Vega, startling her, “you should model. You have a good figure for it.”
Beth was nonplussed. When could Vega have studied her figure? But Vega was adept at observing people without seeming to. She had seen the restlessness in Beth, just as she had seen the ardent mouth and purple eyes and short brown curls, without apparently even looking at her. Now she turned to appraise her.
“I speak purely as a professional,” she said, her mouth showing a humorous twist at the corners. She gazed frankly at Beth now, up and down, stem to stern. “Turn around,” she said.
Beth said, “Vega, I could never model. I’m too old.”
“Nobody’s too old. Except my mother, and she was born fifty years B.C. You have nice hips, Beth.”
The remark, so casual, sent an unwelcome tremor through Beth, who tried to shrug it off. “I’m thirty,” she said. “Who wants to show their clothes on a thirty-year-old when they could show them on a teenager?”
“You’d be surprised,” Vega said. “Me, for one.” Beth stared at her. “Oh, not my own clothes. Only a scarecrow like me can squeak into those. I mean I like the way a woman your age wears her clothes, and so do the men who hire them. They have something no teenager has.”
“A woman my age?” Beth repeated dolefully.
Vega laughed. “You still look like a college girl, Beth. You aren’t, of course, let’s face it. But you look it.”
Beth gave her a wry grin. “I don’t know the first thing about modeling, Vega,” she said.
“I’ll teach you.”
Beth was secretly pleased, very pleased. But she wasn’t thinking of the makeup tricks, or the poise she might acquire. She was thinking, in spite of herself, of the pleasure of spending some time in Vega’s company. She had never been able to bring herself to form a lot of friendships with women. It was not possible for her to be friendly with them, curiously enough, just as it is rarely possible for a man to be friendly with women. Beth had known Jean Purvis for years now and knew her well, but they were
