The Black Marble Read Free

twisted oak sold for one-fifth the price of what it would bring “over the hill,” or “on the west side,” on the beaten path of nouveau riche : Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Bel-Air, Brentwood. Henceforth, Old Pasadena was under siege and near panic. Some were old enough to have children grown and need not fear ghetto busing. Others dropped all democratic pretext, and prep schools quickly became overcrowded. Others moved a few blocks away into the tiny bedroom community of San Marino which had its own public school district. All white.
    Madeline Whitfield now needed that drink very badly. She and Vickie left the bridge and walked quickly down to poolside. Then she heard it. The man was unmistakably a Minnesota tourist in for the Super Bowl. Who else would be reeking of coconut oil, white-legged in Aloha print shorts, red socks, black-and-white patent-leather loafers? A hairy belly glistening oil in sunlight which any Californian knew was not hot enough to burn even this flabby outlander. But then he was probably using the pool and the sunshine as an excuse to get drunk at one o’clock in the afternoon. As if an excuse was needed during Rose Bowl and Super Bowl weeks in Pasadena.
    The man’s voice was bourbon thick. He said, “That bitch moves like a stallion!”
    And Madeline Dills Whitfield, who had been forced into inactive, sustaining membership in the Pasadena Junior League three years before for being too old. Madeline Dills Whitfield, only twenty-five pounds past her prime, never considered pretty, but damn it, not homely. Four years divorced, childless, two-year analysand, three-year patient of a dermatologist (I know that middle-age fat is just excess adipose tissue, Doctor, but why did I have to grow a moustache!). Madeline Dills Whitfield, who dutifully spent more than she could afford in Beverly Hills high-fashion shops like Giorgio’s—which boasted a billiard table, and a full-time bartender serving free drinks to patrons—where Pasadena matrons invariably shopped for clothing with exclusive labels but basic lines. Madeline Dills Whitfield, who cared enough to have her nails done at Ménage à Trois. (Also over the hill in Lotus Land—thirteen bucks, tip included, for a Juliette, forty-five to make hair look more natural, sixty-five bucks to look like you just got out of bed—and you better know the license number of your Mercedes because all the parking attendant has are Mercedes keys in that key box, lady.) Madeline Dills Whitfield, who had not seen male genitalia for five years, yet who was just peaking sexually at the age of forty-three, unsheathed a smile like a knife blade.
    The kind of abandoned smile seldom seen on Pasadena Junior Leaguers, unless they were ignited by Bombay martinis at Annandale Country Club. A smile which would unquestionably be deemed provocative by the socially wed and nearly dead at the all-woman Town Club. Oh God, she dreaded the day she’d be old enough to want to join. Madeline Dills Whitfield unleashed a smile she had reserved for Mason Whitfield on those rare occasions he bedded her in the last dreadful years of their marriage.
    A smile which carried a promise made instantly, consciously, irrevocably—to screw the patent-leather loafers right off this Minnesota greaseball.
    A smile which was not even seen by the hairy stranger. Because he was admiring Vickie. Staring after Vickie.
    The oily stranger turned again to his friend and said: “Look at the muscles in her legs. She moves like a stallion, I tell you!”
    Then Madeline felt loneliness all right. And real fear. The kind that choked her awake in those first months after Mason had gone. The worst kind of fear, born of loneliness, which only became manageable when Vickie came.
    Vickie. Madeline sat there with Vickie by the pool and drank three double Chivas with water-back, and controlled that fear and looked at the hairy stranger scornfully. She