-singing so happily that even morose Broadway strollers smiled through the rain at them-
Paperman stood, scanning the woman's face. "I'll be damned," he said in a quiet wondering tone. "That's who you are. Iris, you're Janet West. Aren't you?"
Chapter two
Janet West
I
The new white convertible was only a Chevrolet, but it seemed enormous on the narrow highway to the airport, whizzing past little European cars, and rust-rotted old American machines. Meadows sat erect and pompous on the front seat. Atlas, in his black silk suit, slouched in the back beside Paperman, who wore new water-buffalo sandals, a pink-and-white striped sport shirt, and white shorts.
"Sixty miles an hour, and it's boiling hot," said Atlas. "And it isn't even eleven in the morning. Tell me again about the trade winds, Norm."
Iris said without turning around, "It's the sun, Lester. Shall I put up the top?"
"No, I want the burn, prove at least that I've been down here." Atlas mopped his naked head. "What do I tell Henny, Norm"? When will you be back?"
Paperman's eyes met Iris's for a moment in the driver's mirror. "Tomorrow, Lester, or Friday. I'll phone her tonight."
The airport, ten minutes from town, was a flat field full of waving guinea grass and assorted brambles. One tarred strip ran east and west through the greenery. The terminal was a spacious brown wooden shed, open to the field. Inside was the ticket counter of an obscure airline, and a tin refreshment booth offering dusty candy, last week's New York papers, and scuffed copies of Time going back to September. About a dozen brightly clad tourists sat on wooden benches, looking hot and hung-over. Several hundred yards away there was a sound like a riot. In the concrete shell of a half-finished building laborers swarmed, abusing each other with great good cheer.
"Governor said last night Pan Am's going to route its Venezuela run through here once that terminal's up," Atlas said. "Figure what that'll do to your land values. Three hours non-stop from New York."
They were standing at a window where there was a little breeze, and Paperman was watching Iris approach from the parking lot. He said absently, "Oh, the boom's got to come. One day this'll just be a hot Larchmont."
"You made out better than I did last night," said Atlas.
Paperman took his eyes off Iris and faced into Atlas's wise grimace. "I didn't make out. Look, Lester, if I decide to go ahead with the hotel, what do I do? What kind of deal will it be?"
"Norm, just make up your mind first."
"But there's a plain big question of money."
"I know. If you want to do it, tell Amy I'm the money man and she'll hear from me. We'll work something out that won't be too hard on anybody. Let me worry about the money end."
"Your plane's landing," Iris called to Atlas. "Get up to the gate so you can grab a front seat. The tail on these planes sort of whips around."
Atlas groaned. "Who ever heard of an airport without a bar? I want a drink. I hate flying. Anybody who ever said he didn't is a liar. That goes for the Wright brothers and Lindbergh."
At the gate he held out his hand to Iris and put on his courtly manner. The small blue plane was swooping in with a roar. "Well, so long, Iris. Thanks for driving me to the airport, that was very thoughtful. Take good care of Norm, now. So long, Norman. Have fun."
A sudden gust of wind whirled dust and papers all over the airport. Thick gray rain began hammering the tin roof, making starry splashes on the concrete apron. The sun continued to shine, and a low rainbow arched over the mountains. A loudspeaker squawked at the passengers to board the plane at once. Atlas exploded with foul talk, apologized to Iris, and then lumbered out of the terminal and into the downpour. He heaved himself up the plane steps, and once inside he turned, waved his fist at Paperman, and shouted something clearly uncomplimentary about the trade winds. The rain continued until the plane started to taxi down the ramp; then Paperman could see the shower drifting along the airstrip and out to sea, a blowing curtain of gray under a single billowing cloud in a serene blue sky.
"Odd weather you have here," he said.
"We have half a dozen different weathers, all at the same time."
"How's the weather going to be for our picnic?"
"Well, Pitt Bay is the place where it doesn't rain even in the rainy season. We should be okay."
With the departure of the plane, desolation shrouded the terminal. The porters, the mechanics, the girls at the counters and the booth all vanished. Nobody was in sight; not one living thing except the flies and a single dust-colored dog lying in the middle of the building, fighting off flies with sad, loud thumps of his tail. The distant noise of the laborers on the new terminal suggested that blood was being spilled in rivers, but walking out into the blaze of the sun Paperman could see about half of them moving slowly and peaceably, and the other half standing quite still, watching them.
The airport lay in the flattest part of Amerigo, amid unbroken square miles of sugar cane. An old stone mill humped its brown cone out of the green carpet, the one structure between the airport and the mountains. The only sounds close by were the cries of birds, and the footfalls of himself and Iris on the cinder path to the parking lot.
"I hope Meadows isn't roasted alive. I have to put up the top and keep the windows half shut or he gets out and terrorizes people."
Meadows was all right, as he demonstrated by howling and lunging in the closed car at Paperman.
"Shut your big face," she shouted, opening the door, and the dog quieted. "Well, now, Norman, where to? I'll take you up through town and around the long way to Pitt Bay, so you'll get a pretty good look at the island. Anything special you want to see?"
"How about that sugar mill? Can we visit it?"
"Not that one." She started the car, and drove out of the lot. Iris drove fast, nervously, but well. "It belongs to one of our rich homos. He has it fixed up as a guest cottage. Quite delightful-Victorian furniture, Corots, and what have you. Marvelous place for parties."
"Are there many of the gay boys here?"
"Whole prides of them, sweetie. They live on the income of uncounted shares of U. S. Steel, Allied Chemical, A. T. & T., and so forth, most of them, and their taxes go to meet a good part of the island's budget. Of course we have poor ones, too."
"Balanced economy," said Paperman.
They were driving down the highway between high straight walls of cane. They passed a withered black woman riding a donkey loaded with pineapples. Meadows growled. "There's more to Amerigo than meets the eye," Norman said.
"More than you'll find out if you spend the rest of your life here. Just this little island of twelve thousand people. Layers under layers under layers."
He said after a silence, "Do you think you'll act again?"
"I expect not."
"Why not? You were marvelous. Such a gift doesn't disappear."
"Well, you're very kind, Norman, but the sort of reputation I got myself seldom rubs off. And besides-" Iris glowered at the road, driving very fast. "Oh, hell, if I do ever act again, just make sure you're not around, that's all. The fallout poisons reservoirs five hundred miles away. Anyway, what am I talking about? The next time would be the death of me. It's absolutely out of the question."
Talking about her career, she now seemed more like the Janet West he remembered. Motions of her head, a trick of pushing out her lips, the powerful rise and fall of her voice brought back to his mind moments of her performances in movies. He could recall how awed he had been, seeing the skyrocketing young film star backstage at the rehearsals of the second Follies for Free Spain. Her hair had been light brown then, rippling to her shoulders. Hardly more than nineteen, she had moved like a squaw in the wake of her husband, Melvin Swann, a suspected communist, but such a success at playing brutal likable villains that Hollywood was then tolerating him. He was either dead now, or drifting around Europe. Paperman was reluctant to ask Iris about him. He knew that some time during her public crack-up, so pitifully early in her career, they had been divorced.
My God, what a beauty she had been! How touching her inexpert willing efforts to sing and dance in the radical skits! Iris Tramm, as a thirtyish blonde encountered on a tropical island, was attractive enough. As the red embers of the briefly incandescent Janet West she was pathetic, startling, and even more appealing.
They drove into the town. (Georgetown was its name; in native parlance it was "dung tung.") The Chevrolet began a tortuous climb along ill-paved streets, steeper, narrower, and more winding as they went up, lined with perilous open sewer trenches, unpainted little wooden houses, and shacks of tin cans hammered flat. None of these places had glass in their windows. The people lived in mazes of plasterboard partitions not reaching to the ceiling, but the interiors were neat, and some walls had bright-tinted religious pictures. All along the way flowering shrubs grew from patches of earth or big lard cans. Children below school age scampered about in little shirts, or less. The progress of the gigantic Chevrolet through the tiny streets was greeted with many a bashful grin and unconcealed penis.
"These people don't live well," he said.
"This is the Caribbean."
"Is there unrest here?"
With a crooked smile she maneuvered the car past a sharp and narrow corner. "Remember, Norman, these people haven't just arrived from Idlewild. They've never seen Park Avenue or Westport."
As they zigzagged uphill, head-on meetings with other vehicles stopped them twice. Once Iris backed around a corner to make way for a taxi. The next time it was she who halted, while the driver of a rickety truck full of live goats waved merrily, gave her a white-toothed grin, and backed out of sight up a steep curving hill, to the loud protests of the terrified goats. "There's a gentleman," said Paperman.
"Oh, mostly they love driving backwards. It's the direction of choice in the Caribbean."
The shacks became fewer as they reached a cooler altitude far above the main town. Soon they were in green countryside, driving along a high ridge on a new two-lane road, with splendid views of the town and the harbor. The houses up here were of a different class: some of white-plastered cement block, with red tile roofs, some of fieldstone, and some eccentric constructions of redwood and glass. These homes ranged from medium size, by American standards, to sprawling mansions, all with large gardens of bougainvillea, scarlet poinsettia, high thickly flowered hibiscus hedges, and lavish plantings of tall-fronded banana trees.
"Beverly Hills," said Paperman.
"Signal Mountain. Same thing. The people here are known as the hill crowd."
"Who are they?"
"Some shop owners. The old plantation families. Retired rich folks. Retired military. Homo couples. Assorted drunks living on trust funds. Mostly white, but there are some old leading colored families."
"Sounds interesting."
"I wouldn't know. The minimum time for acceptance by the hill crowd, so they say, is ten years."
"How about that governor? Is he accepted?"
"Sort of tolerated."
It was a spectacular ride. Paperman delighted in the ever-changing panoramas of the town, the azure sea, and the green hills. The road grew more winding and the scenery became wilder: forested hills and valleys plunging down to red-brown crags and the breaking sea. They rounded a sharp curve, and the town went quite out of sight. This was the other side of Amerigo, more precipitous and even greener, a jungle green. Norman said after a long silence, "Iris, what's eating the governor?"
She briefly turned her head full at him, her large eyes wide. "A number of things, I believe. He did a lot of work to bring out the colored vote on the West Coast for Eisenhower, they say. Expected the Virgin Islands as his lump of sugar, but got Kinja instead. Then I guess there's that wife of his, up in Washington with his two boys, and evidently not about to come down and make him a home, or to divorce him either." She paused. "I also expect His Excellency's never been too happy about finding himself inside a colored skin." Iris swerved the car into a dirt road. "Hang on now."
They went bumping down through tangled woods: some wild palms, papayas, and mangoes, but mostly tall trees like birches with swollen lumps on their trunks, big wooden tumors. She said these were termite nests. The road became steeper and stonier. They were going down and around a hill, entering another climate of dry hot wind, and the car was raising a cloud of red dust with an acrid smell. One cactus plant after another appeared: clumps of straight spiky tubes, barrel cactus, prickly pear. The ground became flinty rubble. More and more the trees gave way to cactus, thornbush, and the great spikes of century plants. The car stopped, for the dirt road ended. Beyond lay a narrow stone trail into the thorns. "I don't know," Iris said. "I've only done this in a jeep before. It's a hell of a walk down from here and we have all that picnic stuff-shoot, let's see what kind of cojones they put in a Chevy nowadays."
