Читать книгу Bury This - Andrea Portes - Страница 22

THREE

It wasn’t long before she realized she could stop a room by walking into it. Dorothy Elizabeth Burke. Dotsy. No, she probably shouldn’t have come to New York, being a kid from the sticks and all—Odessa, Texas, to be exact.

She was a painter, for God’s sake. She was a painter and this was the last of the ’40s and New York City was the place to be. A whir of excitement. Christ, she couldn’t let it pass her by.

And with that kind of talent, it was only a matter of time, she had her finger on the pulse. Her teacher, Mr. Kaufman, told her he’d seen nothing like her paintings. They spoke of landscapes of the mind. Dreamscapes, he called them. And often, he pointed her out in class. “Let’s look at Dorothy’s interpretation.” No, it wasn’t work. It was interpretation. That’s how far ahead of them she already was. Her classmates would mutter under their breaths, but it was true, wasn’t it? Anyway, it seemed to come easy to her, a fearless kind of talent, almost chance.

At first, walking into a bar, restaurant, club, it had been frightening for Dorothy, all the attention. The venal undressing. The outright staring, goddammit. But, met with a shy cowering, however real, somehow made it worse. No, she couldn’t let herself cower. She learned, instead, take a step in, stop, give ’em a second, then eyes to the ground and sideways to the bar. Make bashful coy.

By the time she would reach the bar, there would already be at least three of them, swarming, scowling, vying, chest to her, hearts to her, plotting to get in there.

She was not pretty, nor sweet, nor cute. She was, quite simply, a drop-dead, stop-traffic gorgeous, ink-haired, green-eyed beauty with alabaster skin and bone structure Veronica Lake would envy. And those lips, almost obscene. Sweetheart lips. Kill-you lips. That girl knew how to pout.

She, in fact, knew all the tricks. She was a quick study. Sure, she was just some hick from Odessa, Texas, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t open a magazine and copy a picture, a hairstyle, a sigh. That didn’t mean she couldn’t look at Rita Hayworth in a too-tight sweater and say, yes, I see, I see how you do that. And, all of these things, her calmed-down but sometimes disarming small-town-girl accent, her rarely used but sometimes essential provincial ways, in combination with her kill-yourself good looks, made her, instantly, agonizingly, unforgettable, and, ultimately, irreplaceable.

The painting just made it worse. That she was talented . . . a final blow.

And so it would’ve been, would’ve gone, until she’d end up celebrated in the Met or cherished on Park Avenue or possibly both . … . until she met Edward.

Edward.

For years after, the name alone could make her gulp and grab the nearest cocktail.

It was funny how she met him. How he saw her across the bar. Make no mistake, she liked to drink. Dotsy was out, every night, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, from the day she got to New York to the day she left. She burned it down. Dotsy was not going to let life get away without her. She wasn’t going to miss the party. She was the party.

Seeing her across the bar, surrounded by admirers, he could only smile, that first time. A knowing sort of smile. I’ll get you. Don’t you worry. I’ll get you, my pretty.

And then, weeks later, at a party downtown, there she was again. This time in red. Well, why not, it was Christmas season, why not wear red? And wasn’t she radiant. A red felt dress. A crimson ribbon bow. Was the dress the present or was she? A wink of a dress, a siren number.

It was that night they would consider their first night. Not that it amounted to much. No sleeping, or even leaving, together. But it was that night they both knew. It was obvious.

This was trouble.

How horribly and blissfully and careeningly they fell in love. Catapulting themselves to a world far, far above and away from the everyday dross. They might as well have been part of the sky-line. The moon. The stratosphere. That Wedgwood locket he’d given to her, a simple bauble, a dumb surprise, more precious than a ship of gold.

It was, then, like the paintings, a dreamscape, those eight months. She knew it to the date, never forgot it. December 20 to August 13. The bliss-time of her life. Years later she would look back at that whirling, staggering time. The nights of laughter, running through thunderstorms half-drunk, him on her, next to her, in her, in the alley, laughing, crazy, they were crazy, mad with lust or love or what was it, a longing when the other wasn’t there worse than a junkie. She pined for him, a bottomless thirst.

A weekend up at Cape Cod. Seared in her memory. July 3, 1949. The happiest day of her life. Floating around in the water, she on top of him, only three feet of water and floating on his back, pretending to be . . . what? Laughing and splashing—the whole thing—ridiculous! Back then, in her white-and-blue polka-dot bikini, the most stunning girl on the beach, in Cape Cod, on the Eastern shore for God’s sake. And he’s proud, just fucking proud to be with her.

Edward.

Tall and too thin and from a good family. Edward from Boston who’d seen it all. Edward who was mad about his stop-traffic girl from Odessa. His half-yokel, half—movie star he couldn’t stop thinking about, fucking too much, aching for. Oh Lord, let me just spend the rest of my days fucking this girl I love more than I love myself. Which is not much, now that I think about it.

He blindsided her.

When he broke it off. He took his hand and reached into her chest and pulled out everything a girl from Odessa, Texas, can hold.

Why did he do it? How could he have done it? Was it his family? Was it him? Was it someone else? Was it simply being too much in love? Or was he not . . . actually, too much in love? Was he not in love at all? Was she just a fucking fool?

These were the questions that ran through her head, maddening, over and over and over again, kicking her arm out to the nearest glass, throwing her feet out, one in front of the other, to the nearest bar. You see, I’m pretty. You see, I can still stop a room.

And she could, whether at the Downbeat Club or the Onyx or the Three Deuces. She was not less, no, no even more fetching now. There was a sort of melancholy you wanted to shake out of her. A name you wanted to kiss off her lips. And she would go, every night, just as she’d gone before. She didn’t give herself one night to mourn he-who-she-would-not-speak-of. Not one night. Dress. Check. Heels. Check. Stockings. Check. Lipstick. Check. Like an army routine. This list, this habit. This was the only thing holding her up. If she hadn’t had the checklist, and the bar, and the eight million suitors . . . she would not have made it through.

Still, at the end of the night, alone, having flirted and smiled or even kissed, she would stare in the mirror, those sweetheart lips frozen, that alabaster arm shaking shaking shaking, and watch as that mascara came down in little pieces, droplets, streams. And she would stay frozen, watching her real self, her alone self, what she’d become. After Edward.

And what she’d become was becoming something different, fast. The admirers were still there, yes. Thank God. But inside, the flasks, the shaking. Hidden bottles under the cupboard. Night panics. Her thoughts racing. How easy it would be to break this bottle and take that sharp edge and put it in my neck, my wrists, my gut.

Oh fuck! Fuck this body, fuck this heart. Why?! Why did he do it?

And so, as the nights were getting longer and slurrier and more careless, dangerous, slapdash nights with seedier mornings, it wasn’t a difficult decision to make when Lt. Colonel Charles Krause came waltzing through the door of Clark Monroe’s Uptown House, went up to the drop-dead girl at the bar, a girl with pitch-black hair and ghost skin, and said, “I’m going to marry you and take you back with me to Michigan.”

She laughed at the arrogance. They all did. But looking into his sky-blue eyes and blond crewcut hair, weighing the odds of her ending up with her throat slit on the street against those ice-blue eyes and a place called home with a front porch swing and a man who loved her, she knew. She said to herself, under her lips.

Yes.