Trick or Treat?

  RAY CONNOLLY

  Trick or Treat?

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 1

  She sidestepped gingerly across the steaming pool, and with legs splayed slightly apart allowed the searing water jet to play indulgently upon her thighs and body, savouring the growing excitement she felt, saving the full penetration of the gushing water for a few moments longer. 102 degrees. She dropped the thermometer back into the jakoozi, and pushing with her toes allowed herself to half float, half sink across the length of the bath. Somehow the heat and the restrictions of space made it impossible to swim or even tread water. From the house she could hear the sound of a lone and lonely contralto, singing Ave Regina coelorum, and she waved a careless reassurance to the slumped outline of a man swinging thoughtfully in a hammock on the verandah. A cigarette end glowed a red answer in the darkness, but no further reply was offered. Turning she began to edge her body backwards on to the burning current, at first carefully keeping only her head above the water-line and allowing the force of the jet to massage her shoulders, but then letting it find its way down her backbone, and then right down, and under, and between her legs as she turned and raised herself to a standing position. And then with her hands grabbing firmly on to the chrome handles sunken into the surrounding ceramics, she finally allowed the water to play fully upon her, clenching her teeth and beginning a short and anxious gasp of happiness as it raced between her legs and into her, washing away, she was sure, the internal cobwebs of her life, absolving her from the ways of her fathers whose worthy endeavours had provided such a fortuitously carnal toy. And with a convulsive thrust which embraced the whole trunk of her body she arched her back and, forcing herself into the burning deluge, she gripped tightly to the handles and waited for the cascading deliverance, which sent her at once heaving across the tiny pool, splashing and wallowing in a private ecstasy.

  Across the lawn the cigarette shone reflectively.

  Uncertainly, almost sheepishly, she climbed out of the jakoozi, and after momentarily admiring her own body in the glow of the spotlights which made safe the garden for midnight playthings, she dived quickly and athletically into the refreshing cool of the family pool.

  Impaled on the loneliness of his cigarette he watched her naked outline without excitement. He could see what she had been doing to herself, had seen her do it before, though never when she knew he was watching, and was undismayed by her attitude. If he had tried to possess her then it was his own fault. She would not be owned. Tonight she was showing him how little was her need for him. Selfish to the end maybe this was her way of making their parting easier to bear, he thought. She was deliberately trying to crush his feelings for her, deliberately making a garish mockery of any plans he might have held about fond farewells. She was performing for him. He could sense it. Exorcizing his desire on a display of self-induced eroticism. He lolled back in the hammock and watched silently as the show continued. Did she, he wondered dismally, realize in herself that she was trying to hurt him? Probably not. She was too innocent for that. Whatever malices lay in her were never indulged by intention. He had grown used to humouring that thoughtless streak of abandonment which governed her behaviour, and if sometimes he pricked from the pins of disappointment that this glorious fair creature with whom he had once imagined himself in love might not be more attainable, he had long since accepted the view that it was indeed her very capriciousness that he had found so fascinating. Los Angeles was full of pretty girls, packed with foxy ladies looking for men such as he. And he had known a lot. This girl was looking for nothing. Certainly nothing that he or California had to offer. And now it was their last evening together. The end of a three-month affair. An end devised by her and now being executed by her. And, in a way, he thought, it would be a sublime relief to be rid of her: a relief not to have to believe in love anymore; not to have to play her crazy games: and not to find oneself the onlooker at some private, personal rite like tonight. He looked down across the plain of littered lights that was Los Angeles and reminded himself that he really didn’t care.

  In the swimming pool she lay back on an airbed and considered the constellation of stars which seemed tonight to be hanging low in a black shawl over the city, hooked to the hills behind. What sign are you, little girl? she asked herself. A sign of the times, came the ironic and unthinking mental response. She giggled softly to herself. Tomorrow night she would be in Paris, not as she had last been there as a brash, braced American tourist child, clinging to the arm of her father, but as a woman, a young, grown-up woman of eighteen: a woman who might behave exactly as she wanted. She could almost taste the involuntary flush of excitement she felt at the prospect.

  A lizard, quicksilver fast, ran through the dried grass and leaves in the bushes at the end of the pool and up the sandy canyon wall, and, her imaginings disturbed, she returned her attention to the man sitting motionlessly on the terrace. Did he still love her, she wondered. She’d wanted to love him once, and for a short time the physical excitement of their affair had seemed like a kind of love. But it hadn’t lasted. And although she liked him, liked to tease him, she could no longer deceive herself into believing that she wanted him. If her decision seemed cruel it was a pity. But it couldn’t be helped. None of her affairs had ever amounted to more than a few weeks’ ecstasy, followed by a dulling, gradual withdrawal back into herself as her interest evaporated. How many men had there been? She tried to count. Three affairs, and maybe three or four flying fucks in the night. That didn’t seem too many. She’d been an early starter. Privilege and looks had made certain of that. Yet all the relationships had been in their way unsatisfactory. The men she had known had been too possessive, even when the extent of the relationships was to be no more than a one-night-stand. They were conquistadorial, wanting to take too much of her away with them when they left.

  She wondered whether it would be different in Paris. Would men in France be more adult, less demanding than American boys?

  ‘A pretty bull frog sitting on a lily pad.’ He had crossed the lawn and was crouching at the side of the pool watching her. She moved a hand unconsciously to cover her sex. He noticed and smiled to himself. No matter how hard she might try she would always betray her conservative, safe, middle-class background with tiny involuntary mannerisms and inhibitions such as this. He looked at her perfectly formed, long-limbed body, golden from summers in the sun, thin and athletic, and admired her cool, unworried face, the long elegant neck and the mass of fair hair which, now wet, stuck lifelessly to the airbed. Just an overgrown child, he thought with affection, but without desire.

  ‘Are you going to miss me?’ Her question assumed, and her ego required, an affirmative answer. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she was sure she had done. She always hurt her lovers in the end. That was the nature of her relationships. It had become the inevitable finality. Yet still she required his continued affection to be articulated.

  He leaned out and, grabbing hold of the rope attached to the front of the airbed, pulled her towards him: ‘Are you going to kiss me …’ he paused, and watched her wrinkle up her nose as he forced the metre of his line to exactly match hers: then came the counter punch, ‘… goodbye?’

  She was surprised. He must be teasing. ‘You’re not going?’ Balancing carefully she pulled herself to her knees and with his help skipped off her subsiding raft and on to the grass. He held out her bathrobe as she expected, and her nakedness disappeared inside folds of pale blue and white towelling. Suddenly her face wa
s alert and puzzled. Almost dismayed.

  He nodded.

  ‘You can’t go. Not yet. It’s our last night together.’

  ‘Our first night apart.’

  She felt for a cigarette in his jacket pocket while simultaneously running a hand flirtatiously round his neck. He ignored it and producing a lighter offered her the flame. Sensing the rejection and unable to comprehend its meaning she quickly withdrew her show of affection and concentrated upon tightening the belt to her gown.

  ‘Is it because of that?’ Almost pouting with disappointment and surprise her head nodded towards the jakoozi. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

  ‘It isn’t because of that or this or anything you can understand. It’s late. It’s finished. You’re going to begin again in Paris and I’m going to hang out around here for a while and pick up a few loose ends, sweep out the mess, see my kids, stop behaving like a jerk, talk to my old lady, sit in the sun and have a little think, go to the office, keep up my payments, maybe try a new blend of aftershave, get my teeth fixed, maybe go mad and get a new hair style – what about a brush-top? That’s my generation, you see. And after I’ve been dry cleaned and stuck out in the sun to shrink maybe I’ll fit where I touch and what I touch. And then I’ll start over again. But here, in California, where the oranges come from.’

  She slouched on to the hammock that creaked in protest:

  ‘Let’s talk about things.’

  He shook his head: ‘Come on. It’s late. I’ll see you at TWA tomorrow afternoon. Go to bed, Kathy.’

  ‘Don’t you be a father to me.’ Her reaction was almost violent in its fervour. He waited for some softening in the sharpness but none came.

  ‘I’m too young and I’m too patient to do that,’ he said wearily at last. And knowing that no further response was likely he withdrew silently across the lawn towards his car, leaving her rocking morosely in the hammock. Bye bye, love, he murmured as he swung the car round and turned into the hairpin road that led down to Laurel Canyon. And even then he knew that he wouldn’t make it to the airport to see her off the next day. There was nothing further for him to say.

  Kathy heard her father arrive home sometime in the middle of the night, heard the crunch of his car on the gravel, and listened to his gruff dismissal of Mr Hawkins, the chauffeur, with the usual terse instructions for the following day. And then she fell back into her dream as the rigid, money-erected, class structure renewed itself on this hill overlooking Los Angeles, the driver making a polite, subservient and well-paid way home, while her father went silently to his bed.

  And into that dream came the confused image of her father, always powerful, always smiling as he helped her as a child on to the funfair, buying candy floss, guiding her from carousel to carousel, on to the scenic rides, one arm around her, fending off the other cheeky, eager kids, frowning at the attendants, and shouting instructions to the middle-aged governess. Always impatient with others, always adoring with her, and always refusing to talk about her mother. And at eight years old sitting on a hobby horse that went round and round while the music played, Kathy’s dream melted into a cloistered sleep.

  The drive down to Los Angeles International Airport was formal and restrained. Mr Hawkins sat in the front of the black Lincoln while Mr Crawford and his daughter talked sociably and distantly in the back. Crawford didn’t particularly approve of her decision to study in Paris. Indeed to be honest with himself about Kathy for once in his lifetime he didn’t believe study to be her real reason for going. She had never shown any desire for academic advancement, and he was convinced that she had only decided to go to school at Sarah Lawrence last year so that she might be free to travel back east by herself. That adventure had been short lived, anyway, since just two semesters after enrolling in a liberal arts course she had dropped out and flown home announcing that her life at Sarah Lawrence had been neither liberal nor artistic. A considerable period of idleness had followed, broken by odd bouts of drama study at UCLA and a course in painting at the Santa Monica City College, and then from nowhere seemingly had come the sudden desire to live in Paris. Once again he realized that his daughter had fallen in love with a romantic image of herself as a free and wealthy American girl in Europe, rather than with the reality of actually having to get by in a foreign country. But he had never stood in her way before and saw no reason why he should do so now. She had always been free to do whatever she wanted, and so far, to his knowledge at any rate, she had not disgraced him by abusing that privilege.

  ‘You have the address of the Chase in Paris?’ He was making attempts at blind-alley conversations rather than allowing himself to actually be drawn into talking to her.

  Kathy nodded, and wondered absently why her allowance was to be sent through a New York bank when she had lived in California all her life. Such were the workings of international accountancy, she thought. It was probably some kind of tax manœuvre out of her mother’s estate. You didn’t live in the style of the Crawfords without the aid of the most sophisticated accountancy techniques.

  ‘I’ve made arrangements for you to be able to draw three thousand dollars a month. That should be sufficient, but if you need any more let me know. The manager at the Chase is acquainted with your position so you shouldn’t have any difficulty there, although with the rate of inflation like it is … I don’t know. You may have to watch out a little now and then….’

  Just like Father to wander off on a subject like world inflation at a time like this, she thought. He was determined not to become involved in her affairs. She knew he had the address and ’phone number of the Hotel Raphael where she was booked into until she found her way around, but she knew also that he would never write or call her there. That would have broken their rules.

  ‘I suppose you have friends there?’

  ‘I have an address … a girl I met up in San Francisco … a Dutch girl. She gave me an address. I have a letter for someone.’

  ‘Well, I just hope you’ll watch out for the company you keep out there,’ he said. And that was about as close as he ever got to giving her the don’t-talk-to-any-strange-French-bogey-men pep talk.

  No one turned up at the airport to wave goodbye; an absence which Kathy tried hard not to notice or think about. And then rather than have Mr Hawkins put the car into one of the parking lots, Mr Crawford made an excuse about having to hurry back down town for a business meeting. So with a slight graze of his lips across her cheek he left her while the airline security crew did their check on her hand baggage. And picking up her loose change, silver compact case, purse and odd metallic objects from the safety box on the other side of the security walk-through she caught sight of him scurrying out of the automatic glass doors back to his car, moving without a backward glance to people in whose company he felt secure, to men he might bully and manipulate, to wealth still to be accumulated.

  A young and beautiful girl in an international airline terminal is a magnet. From the bars and coffee shops which cluster round the departure lounges men, old and young, single or merely travelling single, watch and wonder whether they’ll be chosen by the god of chance to be placed in an adjacent seat and have a ten-hour, thirty-four-thousand-feet-high romance with some currently unattainable being, with maybe promises of more to come when land is once again sighted. Kathy had been through it all before. She knew the rules, and carefully had prepared herself as casually crisp as possible, that an air of aloofness might provoke overtures from those acceptable while repelling those not to be encouraged. Once in the large circular departure area she checked into the rest room where in a long flatteringly lit mirror she studied herself with an admiring subjectivity. Her jeans, old but dry cleaned two days ago, were offset by a severely starched man’s white shirt and an expensive light fawn flared cotton jacket. She wore no jewellery, but had tied her hair in an elaborate show of casualness inside a satin floral scarf which hung down her back. Contemplatively she observed the golden symmetry of her face, the straight arrogant nose
and clear bright grey eyes, and then, satisfied, she pursed her lips in reassurance, threw her leather strapped bag self-confidently over her shoulder and made for the door. She was ready for her adventure. At the counter a Mexican rest room attendant watched the display with an expression which might have been a mixture of envy and cynicism, grunting towards the carelessly tossed quarter without gratitude.

  At the seat reservations desk Kathy ignored the curious glances of her fellow travellers, moved straight to the blue firstclass desk, chose her movie and was on board and in her seat before anyone had the opportunity to manœuvre a position of approach. It was important that she appear cool and self-assured, even though butterflies were beginning a vice-like grip on her stomach. Why hadn’t he come to see her off? He loved her, she was sure. And what about her father? Some moment of intimacy was all she’d wanted. Just one moment. Just one second. That wasn’t much to ask. Hawkins had shown more regret about her departure. For a split second she felt tears stinging her eyes and signalling self-pity, but instantly strong again she dived into her purse and hid behind her sunglasses that her loneliness might not show in front of the stewardesses. From the anonymous sanctity of her polaroid lenses she allowed her eyes to peruse her fellow passengers. Two families with children held no interest for her, nor did the collection of African business men giggling loudly across the aisle. It looked like being an unrewarding flight. Behind her in the coach departments of the 747 she could hear the bustle and business of huge activity as the flight prepared for take-off. Maybe she should have flown coach. Nobody other than the nouveau riche and company servants ever flew first class anymore. She determined to move back directly dinner was finished. She would have to change seats to see the movie anyway.

  Just as she was in the middle of her mental debate about the social disadvantages of being rich she noticed a tall prematurely greying man being shown to a seat across the aisle by a professionally smiling stewardess. Under the pretence of studying her in-flight programme guide she observed him with a studied calculation, while he chatted pleasantly to the stewardess about the length of time the flight might take, the weather in Paris, and what cocktail he would prefer once they were airborne.