Westlake, Donald E - Novel 50 by Sacred Monster (v1.1) Page B

Pine.
                 It
was him, all right. In cowboy hat and fringed jacket and high decorated boots,
he sat in a very low canvas chair at the deep end of the pool, seated well down
and back so his head and knees were at the same height, cowboy hat pulled low
over his eyes to shade them from the afternoon sun, booted legs stretched far
out in front of him over the redwood deck with ankles crossed, hands folded
casually in lap. From a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, a slender pale
tendril of smoke wavered upward past his ear and the brim of his hat.
                 Marcia
did not break stride. Her eyes narrowed slightly, she gazed steadily at that
self-absorbed profile out there, and she kept walking, on down to the end of
the hall, where she faced front again at last, moving through the doorway into
the master bedroom.
                 A
battered round, soft traveling bag and an equally well-worn soft suit-carrier
lay on the bed. Nodding as though to say her expectations had been fulfilled,
she walked around the bed to the wall of closets and hung the dry-cleaning bag
on the rod. Then she turned, looked again at the luggage on the bed, took a
long, slow breath, and glanced across the room at her reflection in the
dressing mirror there. No expression showed in the face looking back at her.
                 A
sliding glass door led from the bedroom to the pool, near its shallow end.
Marcia stepped through, slid the door shut behind her, and looked down across
the water at Jack, who hadn't moved. An almost inaudible sigh parted her lips,
which then pressed shut again. Deliberately she strode around the pool. He
finally—as she was halfway to him—lifted his head and lifted his hand to lift
his cowboy hat away from his eyes to watch her. Nothing else on him moved.
                 Marcia
stopped in front of him. They looked at each other for a long silent moment, and
Marcia did not ask him anything about Buddy Pal. Then, with a kind of grim
fatalism, she said, “I knew this all along, of course."
                 "Your
heart told you," he said.
                 "Or
some organ," she said. She turned and walked back to the bedroom, and a
little later he arced his cigarette butt into the pool
and followed.
     

11
                 “It
was a wonderful wedding,” I say.
                I sit and smile in the sunlight,
remembering. It was a lovely white chapel in Santa Monica ; it had been used in the movies more than
once to suggest firm, small-town American values. It had that traditional
shape, the narrow front with the arched doors, the clapboard wall angling
inward on both sides above the doors, then straightening again to reach upward,
forming the steeple. In front of this setting, the gray cement walk came out
straight and true from the front steps, flanked by gleaming green grass, mowed
as tightly as a golf course. Two dozen clean and presentable well-wishers
waited on this walk and this grass for Marcia and me to emerge from the chapel,
hitched. On the fringes, a few reporters and photographers hovered, waiting to
record the event.
                 I
smile upon the dour interviewer; even upon him I smile. "I really
believe," I tell him, " that first weddings are very important. They set the whole tone for your marriages to come. Buddy
flew out from New York, of course, to be best man, and Marcia's
public-relations man set up the whole thing with a great deal of care and
taste. The media were there, and the whole scene played just terrific."
                 I
can still see it, in fact. Out of the chapel we came at the end of the
ceremony, Jack Pine and Marcia “The First Mrs. Pine" Callahan. The
gathered well-wishers crowded around us, wishing us well. Buddy came grinning
out behind us, along with Marcia's PR man’s secretary, the matron of honor.
Rice was thrown. The driver got out of the white stretch limo waiting at