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“You don’t have to convince me about the restorative value of a good soak. Gad, I’m glad you’re here. Tell me, do you see your former husband?”
“I think he’s had quite enough of me.”
“How about the war hero?”
“Ishmael is reading for the law,” she said. “I think you already know these things.”
“Just checking up,” he said.
Checking up on whom? she thought.
His eyes roved over her person. “I turn to water when I look at you.”
“You’ve always been a dear,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down now. It’s beautiful here on the promontory, but I really need a bath.”
“After we eat.”
“I had a bite on the train. I just want a bath.”
“You need to keep up your strength. I know what’s best for my girl.”
SHE SLEPT THE entire afternoon and woke refreshed and happy, combing back her hair with her fingers, stretching in front of a window that gave on to palm trees and an ocean aglitter with the sunset. What had Arnold said of her? She was Venus rising from the surf? Was he mocking her again, as he had in San Antonio? Fannie Porter had advised the girls that the key to success in business lay in a short memory and shallow feelings. What dreck, Maggie had thought at the time. Upon reflection, she’d revised her opinion of Miss Porter’s admonition to: It’s not just dreck. Anyone who makes a statement like that is either lying or a sap and deserves to get reamed with a telephone pole.
After a candlelight supper on the terrace, she drank coffee while Arnold drank brandy, and kept him up as late as possible. Then they played gin rummy and walked on the beach and ended up at the amusement pier, where she made him take her on the rides until it closed for the night.
“You’re inexhaustible,” he said. “I can’t keep up with you. I must go to sleep.”
“Let’s walk out on the rocks,” she replied. “Please. Look at the breakers. I love California.”
“Would that you were mine, Maggie.”
“Maybe I will be. Someday.”
“Ah, the caveat,” he said. “But if there were no caveat, you wouldn’t be Maggie.”
At eight-thirty the next morning, she went into his bedroom and shook him awake.
“My God, woman, have you lost your mind? What time is it?” he said.
“I fixed you a fine breakfast.”
“That’s what I have a cook for.”
“Not today.”
“What?”
“I sent him home. The other servants as well.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’d like us to be together. I’d like to talk about some motion picture ideas I have. Sundance and Butch didn’t die in South America.”
“Oh, this will shake the foundations of modern history.”
“I think it’s an important story,” she said.
“Nobody is going to see a film about a couple of ignorant Wyoming hayseeds.”
