Green Ice (7 page)

“You’re a good swimmer,” she said.

“I guess.”

They swam to shore, dropped onto the sand, respecting the line she had drawn between them. She lay prone, her position like an embrace, one leg straight, the other angled up. Her arms and hands seemed to be hugging the warm sand, while one cheek rested upon it. She was looking at Wiley.

He lay face up, his forearm shading his eyes. He got a Jennifer thought—but only a tiny one. Surprising how much she was reduced now, to practically nothing, when just yesterday she had been so magnified. He blinked. Jennifer had become that easy to erase.

This woman, Lillian, Wiley thought, he had known her little more than an hour and the effect she was having on him was way out of honest proportion. He was just lonely, raw lonely, and badly in need of a refill of self-assurance. He wanted to cross the line, hold her, press full length against her, arouse her with his arousal, be mouth to mouth with her.… Perhaps not take it all the way, just to know the willingness was there.… It meant nothing really. By tomorrow he would see her differently. Timing was everything. She had just happened into his rawest moment.

He probably wouldn’t be seeing much of her once they got to Las Hadas. So, he might as well see as much as he could of her now. He stopped stealing, looked directly at her, wherever he wanted. Her, rolling over onto her back now, with her hipbones sharply defined and her stomach concave. Sand on her skin. It seemed cruel on her breasts, the sand. Through her soaked panties he could see the dark triangle.

“How long have you been a mercenary?” she asked.

Mercenary? It took him a moment to get it.

“Since yesterday.”

She thought he was being facetious.

She told him: “I might be able to help you in Las Hadas. Listen around, talk you up, steer some likely ones your way.”

“You’d expect me to return the favor, of course.”

He took her silence to mean yes. He detested the idea.

She sat up. “I suppose you know women are going for much younger men these days. Not even men, as a matter of fact. Boys. Seventeen-, eighteen-year-olds.” She shrugged, looked off down the beach, so he couldn’t see her grin. “I understand it’s a matter of stamina.”

“Nothing beats experience.”

“Still, there’s a lot to be said for naïveté;” She swished her hair back and forth so it could dry faster. “It’s refreshing, ego-nourishing. It’s …”

“Too fast and fumbly.”

She grinned right at him, a crooked grin, slightly higher on the left. The unevenness didn’t show when she laughed, only when she grinned. It gave her left cheek a commalike dimple, but it also conveyed the impression that she was a bit of a wiseass.

“You’ll do all right,” she told him. “You have a good body.”

5

Las Hadas.

Wiley had expected it to be the sort of resort hotel that qualified for its
deluxe
designation by being only slightly cleaner, roomier, better-furnished and more dependably staffed than ordinary.

Not so.

It was six hundred acres. A paradisaical village in itself, built from the ground up at a cost of 35 million. Dollars, not pesos. Situated on an easy slope at the merest indentation of coastline, it was protected by its own newly constructed breakwater. The quality of the original beach there would have been outstanding almost anywhere else in the world, but shiploads of even finer-grained, whiter sand had been brought in from Hawaii.

Two hundred white bungalows were placed modularly on and along the slope. Although they were clustered, they did not seem to be pushing one another for space. There was privacy and, at the same time, an intimacy created by connecting walls, terraces, and little secret walkways.

The architectural style was difficult to define, simply because, as pure and clean as it appeared, it was such a concoction. Part Monte Carlo, part Alexandria, some Mexican pueblo, of course, but mainly Moorish—like a mazy section of Marrakesh minus the babble and beggars. Minarets, onion-shaped spires, winding-staired towers, cupolas, gazebos, lattices, all sorts of twists and turns and surprising curlicues. As though the designer, given freedom to express any caprice, had put whimsy to service.

There were five restaurants, six bars, three nightclubs, eight tennis courts, numerous shops, a golf course, a cinema, and, for sudden pangs of piety or emergency expiations, a chapel.

A deep-water marina accommodated those who preferred to arrive privately by sea.

Three swimming pools. One was the largest in Mexico, perhaps in the world. Surely the most impressive. Right at beach-side, a free-form, lagoonlike pool holding two million liters of water that was purified twice and softened three times daily. So large a pool it was an obstacle. A bridge of woven rope was suspended across its middle to avoid the long walk around.

Cars were not permitted beyond the main entrance.

That rule was actually a convenience for Wiley, who felt self-conscious about the VW. Just ahead, a dark gray Daimler limousine was cruising in to unload, and ahead of that on the circular drive was a black Mercedes 600. All sorts of large, costly cars idled near the entrance and were parked around, their substantial composure hyphenated here and there by the incorrigible colors and lines of the smaller expensive cars such as Ferrari Dinos, Lotus Elites, Excaliburs and Maserati Boras. Off to the right of the entrance, parked in precise order like a fleet, were seven Bentley sedans, seven exactly alike, white with a family crest intricately handpainted on the left front door panel. The crest of Argenti.

Wiley drove past, around the drive and back out. No need to start with such a handicap. Lillian agreed. He parked the car well out of notice on the side road. They had to walk nearly a quarter mile. Lillian helped by carrying the smallest, lightest piece of Wiley’s luggage.

As they neared the entrance Wiley hesitated to study the situation. New arrivals were getting all the attention. He spotted a this-year’s Rolls Royce Corniche convertible, a deep-blue seventy-thousand-dollar beauty, parked in perfect position almost opposite the entrance.

He went to it, approaching from the blind side. Lillian followed. The car wasn’t locked. Wiley tossed the baggage in the back, got in and climbed over into the driver’s seat. Lillian got in and, following Wiley’s instructions, quietly closed the door.

The key was in the ignition.

Wiley started the car up, opened the window and pressed the horn. Three brief imperative honks, a shout, then three more honks that even the busiest porters could not disregard.

Wiley got out of the Corniche. Stood there beside it. He didn’t have to resort to words. His air conveyed impatience, and three porters hurried toward the car to look after the baggage as Wiley and Lillian strolled on in.

The reception area was crowded. About a hundred people. Many greats had arrived at once, and evidently not everything had been well enough planned in advance. There was confusion about where to put who. The manager was trying to please and placate just about everyone, because just about everyone was important and used to being treated accordingly. Adding to the disorder, the guests were greeting and gushing all over one another, with a lot of double cheek-kissing and insincere but enthusiastic embracing.

There they were, the powerful and the spoiled, the ones who enjoyed making news. Flaunting, narcissistic, they were already forming new erotic alliances with their eyes, with no more than a flick of a glance, agreeing.

There was a delicate intensity about most of the men, like tightrope walkers who out of habit were unable to take a solid stance. The women wore their assertiveness as though it were an accessory. They were quite blunt, flourishing their mental competence and physical advantages. Thus, an atmosphere of bisexuality prevailed. Their clothes, gestures, the quick-change artistry of their facial expressions and manner of speaking all contributed. Sexual chameleons. But not altogether evil. It was more a social way.
Au courant
to look in both directions for pleasure, if only for appearance—to keep in, not to be left out. Worst of all was to have a reputation for being dull.

Present also were the usual camp followers. A few leading players from the movies, strangers with familiar faces, some overused, passé. Along with other types of entertainers—sharp wits, sharp tongues, atrocious characters, bizarre personalities, needed for perverse amusement, suffering by comparison, making the powerful and beautiful appreciate themselves all the more.

Wiley felt out of place. If he fit in, as Mrs. Gimble had predicted, he had to do some serious self-reappraising, he thought. He turned to speak to Lillian.

She wasn’t there.

She’d slipped away, nowhere in sight. Probably, Wiley decided, she didn’t want to be seen with him because that would cramp her ambitions. Couldn’t blame her. But at least she could have said good-bye, thanks for the lift, or anything.

What now? Wiley wondered. Ask for Mrs. Gimble? She was his only in, had offered to arrange things with what’s-his-name … Argenti. However, that would mean getting into the battle going on at the reception desk. He was there on such a flimsy invitation.

He spotted a porter.

He remembered
la mordida
, grabbed the porter’s arm, said
“Por favor”
and slipped him 600 pesos. Fifty dollars. Extravagant, but worth it if it worked.

The porter understood the money. He took Wiley’s luggage and provided interference through the crowd, across the reception area and outside to a courtyard, where there was an electric cart with a white awning top. Luggage and Wiley aboard, the porter started the cart and steered it down the cobblestone street.

“What number is your bungalow,
señor
?”

First to Wiley’s mind came eleven. He skipped from it to thirty, then to seventy-five, and told the porter, “Seventy-eight.”

The porter nodded and said, as though he’d heard, “One-fourteen.”

Wiley confirmed that and sat back to enjoy the ride. Along the way they passed people. Several said hello because he appeared to be someone they should know, or wanted to. Two Mrs. Gimble types gave him just enough of an eye, and a little farther on, so did a man and a woman together.

No sign of Lillian.

Wiley thought perhaps she’d been ejected. If so, what was he doing there? His concern was canceled by recalling how efficient she’d been.

The cart turned left, climbed up a narrower street, then right for a short distance. It stopped at the foot of a flight of wide white stairs that led to a landing. A heavy white door was discreetly numbered
114
. The porter used his passkey. He placed the luggage inside, said
“Muchas gracias”
twice and departed.

It was a large square room, about twenty by twenty, with a high, domed ceiling. White splashed sparingly with yellow, green, blue. The floor was white marble, strategically softened with thick curly-wool rugs, also white. Two facing sofas and a matching chair were covered in a natural muslin-like linen that incorporated an almost indiscernible blue stripe. On a table of inch-thick milk glass was a silver salver of fruit, next to the latest issues of
Vogue
and
Réalités
, next to a cut-crystal container of Dunhill cigarettes, next to a humidor containing a dozen Havanas.

Off to one side was a small, wet bar, already well stocked, including two bottles of Tattinger ’62.

Three oil paintings and two pen sketches on the walls. Well done, certainly of value. Wiley went up close to one, a small boldly stroked landscape. It was just ordinarily hung with wire. He remembered his hotel in Acapulco had horrible lithographs screwed to the walls. Didn’t rich people steal? Or perhaps when they did, it was never mentioned, merely added to the bill. Smart way to sell paintings, Wiley thought.

It occurred to him there was no bed. Were the sofas convertible? That didn’t seem in keeping.

Two doors on the interior wall. One was a closet. The other would surely be the bath. However, Wiley discovered it opened into another room, the bedroom, nearly as large a room as the first and just as tastefully appointed. The bed was king-size. Fresh-cut flowers were on the side table by a window. And there was the bath, all marble and chrome, with a tub large enough for two or even three, depending.

Sweet Jesus, he’d appropriated a suite. He would have settled for a reasonably comfortable room. According to law, the price tag had to be somewhere. Wiley found it, practically hidden on the inside frame of a closet door.

Three thousand seven hundred fifty pesos per day.

Three hundred dollars a day.

His next thought was to run, get out.

But he didn’t want to, really. Besides, 114 had been the porter’s choice. The porter had to know something. Yes, he definitely should trust the porter.

He unpacked, undressed, took a shower to wash away the sand and seawater film left from that swim with Lillian. Washing her away, he thought, and when he was rubbing dry with a huge yellow-striped towel, his mind was free of her. Next moment, however, she jumped back in full force. Time would help. By tomorrow, maybe even by later that night, she’d be vague, in proper perspective.

As for now, he was hungry. That half of a half of a papaya hadn’t been much to go on. Should he push his luck as far as room service?

He called and asked what they had to offer. It was only six o’clock. Did he want an early dinner or only something to tide him over? They would send him a menu. No, he’d tell them what he wanted, and they could tell him what they didn’t have. He’d start with some smoked Scottish salmon. Make that a double order. Then some soup, say, cream of avocado. Steamed mussels with butter sauce. Roast rack of lamb, charred outside, pink in the middle; cottage-fried potatoes, and arugola and endive salad. He’d do his own oil-and-vinegar dressing. Chocolate mousse for dessert and, as an afterthought, an assortment of cheeses, especially Brie. Coffee, of course. And a carton of Camels.

“Sí, señor.”

Maybe the guy hadn’t understood a word, Wiley thought. Anyway, he’d already clicked off.