The Blonde by Anna Godbersen Page B

mother?”
    Her eyes were open again, so she saw when he nodded.
    “Never been married, huh?”
    He shook his head.
    “I’ve been married three times, but it never seems to …” She trailed off, but not in the daffy way she had before. A new energy coursed through her limbs—she was lighter in his arms—and her eyes shone at something over his shoulder that he wished to god he could turn and see.
    “It never seems to …?” he prompted.
    She was smiling again, and she had caught the rhythm of the song. Walls felt suddenly as though he had just been given a corner office, a shot of Benzedrine, and the spirit of Fred Astaire. They were doing an effortless Lindy; Walls had never danced so well in his life. When she kicked off her shoes he forgot himself and started smiling. And he was still smiling when he felt the tap at his shoulder, and turned to see Kennedy.
    “May I cut in?” the senator asked. Earlier, Walls had spotted him talking up Kim Novak, but Kim Novak was nowhere in sight now. He was smiling, too, but Walls knew it had a different effect than the boyish grin sliding from his own face.
    Walls glanced back at Marilyn, as though she might protest that she was enjoying herself with her current partner, and saw that she must have bent down to scoop up her pumps because she was now cradling them in her arms.
    “Will you hold these for me?” she asked Walls, as sweetly as though she were telling him she loved him for the first time.
    “Sure,” he said, awkwardly taking the shoes. With the heels pressed against his chest he stepped back, and then back again, until he was out of the thicket of swinging bodies.
    Once he was properly on the sidelines, he realized how dizzy he had felt in Marilyn’s presence, how unwieldy she was, and he knew that he ought to be relieved to be back where he could watch and observe. But bitterness tightened his throat. Kennedy had made a pass as surely as he might have ordered a steak. Walls’s sense of his own ridiculousness increased when he noted the senator’s navy slacks, the fine weave of his white shirt, the narrow black tie, the knot of which he’d loosened but not undone, as though to remind everyone that he was just a visitor in carefree California, and would be going back to the grown-ups’ table shortly. Walls did not have the body of a beatnik, and should never have allowed himself to be shoehorned into pink.
    In his peripheral vision, he saw the way Marilyn was talking to the senator, and was angry at himself all over again for continuing to feel like a jilted lover. He violently uncorked a bottle of scotch, and poured a double portion into a glass without ice. He took a long pull, and an idea hit him, and he swung his head to look over his shoulder.
    At this distance he couldn’t hear what Marilyn was saying, but he could see that she was chastising the senator in a flirtatious, joking way. They had met before—it was obvious by the knowing manner in which they were now bantering and moving lightly on their feet. There was a history, Walls was sure of it. He finished the scotch and glanced around for a girl to dance with so that he could get close enough to hear what they were saying.
    But he didn’t spot one right away, and when he did he wasted preciousminutes trying to think of an opening line. In the end he just introduced himself to the brunette in the high-necked black linen dress, and asked if she was enjoying herself. “Very much” was her swift reply. She seemed grateful for his attention, and agreed to dance the moment he hinted that he might be willing. But by the time they were on the floor, swaying to a new record, Kennedy was dancing with Mosey. Walls’s gaze went around the room, but he couldn’t find Marilyn anywhere, and he knew this wasn’t because she had somehow magically started blending in.
    “Is something wrong?” the brunette asked. Her ski-jump nose turned a little pink when she asked the question, but she went on looking up