PEARL: The man wants brandy.
STEWARDESS: I’m sorry, Miss Bailey. It’s not permitted.
PEARL (in a smooth yet metallic tone familiar to me from House of Flowers rehearsals): Bring the man his brandy. The whole bottle. Now.
(The stewardess brought the brandy, and I poured myself a hefty dose with an unsteady hand: hunger, fatigue, anxiety, the dizzying events of the last twenty-four hours were presenting their bill. I treated myself to another drink and began to feel a bit lighter.)
TC: I suppose I ought to tell you what this is all about.
PEARL: Not necessarily.
TC: Then I won’t. That way you’ll have a free conscience. I’ll just say that I haven’t done anything a sensible person would classify as criminal.
PEARL (consulting a diamond wristwatch): We should be over Palm Springs by now. I heard the door close ages ago. Stewardess!
STEWARDESS: Yes, Miss Bailey?
PEARL: What’s going on?
STEWARDESS: Oh, there’s the captain now—
CAPTAIN’S VOICE (over loudspeaker): Ladies and gentlemen, we regret the delay. We should be departing shortly. Thank you for your patience.
TC: Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.
PEARL: Have another slug. You’re shaking. You’d think it was a first night. I mean, it can’t be that bad.
TC: It’s worse. And I can’t stop shaking—not till we’re in the air. Maybe not till we land in New York.
PEARL: You still living in New York?
TC: Thank God.
PEARL: You remember Louis? My husband?
TC: Louis Bellson. Sure. The greatest drummer in the world. Better than Gene Krupa.
PEARL: We both work Vegas so much, it made sense to buy a house there. I’ve become a real homebody. I do a lot of cooking. I’m writing a cookbook. Living in Vegas is just like living anywhere else, as long as you stay away from the undesirables. Gamblers. Unemployeds. Any time a man says to me he’d work if he could find a job, I always tell him to look in the phone book under G. G for gigolo. He’ll find work. In Vegas, anyways. That’s a town of desperate women. I’m lucky; I found the right man and had the sense to know it.
TC: Are you going to work in New York?
PEARL: Persian Room.
CAPTAIN’S VOICE: I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we’ll be delayed a few minutes longer. Please remain seated. Those who care to smoke may do so.
PEARL (suddenly stiffening): I don’t like this. They’re opening the door.
TC: What?
PEARL: They’re opening the door.
TC: Jesus, Joseph—
PEARL: I don’t like this.
TC: Jesus, Joseph—
PEARL: Slump down in the seat. Pull the hat over your face.
TC: I’m scared.
PEARL (gripping my hand, squeezing it): Snore.
TC: Snore? PEARL: Snore!
TC: I’m strangling. I can’t snore.
PEARL: You’d better start trying, ’cause our friends are coming through that door. Looks like they’re gonna roust the joint. Clean-tooth it.
TC: Jesus, Joseph—
PEARL: Snore, you rascal, snore.
(I snored, and she increased the pressure of her hold on my hand; at the same time she began to hum a low sweet lullaby, like a mother soothing a fretful child. All the while another kind of humming surrounded us: human voices concerned with what was happening on the plane, the purpose of the two mysterious men who were pacing up and down the aisles, pausing now and again to scrutinize a passenger. Minutes elapsed. I counted them off: six, seven. Tickticktick. Eventually Pearl stopped crooning her maternal melody, and withdrew her hand from mine. Then I heard the plane’s big round door slam shut.)
TC: Have they gone?
PEARL: Uh-huh. But whoever it is they’re looking for, they sure must want him bad.
THEY DID INDEED. EVEN THOUGH Robert M.’s retrial ended exactly as I had predicted, and the jury brought in a verdict of guilty on three counts of first-degree murder, the California courts continued to take a harsh view of my refusal to cooperate with them. I was not aware of this; I thought that in due time the matter would be forgotten. So I did not hesitate to return to California when a year later something came up that required at least a brief visit there.
Well, sir, I had no sooner registered at the Bel Air Hotel than I was arrested, summoned before a hard-nosed judge who fined me five thousand dollars and gave me an indefinite sentence in the Orange County jail, which meant they could keep me locked up for weeks or months or years. However, I was soon released because the summons for my arrest contained a small but significant error: it listed me as a legal resident of California, when in fact I was a resident of New York, a fact which made my conviction and confinement invalid.
But all that was still far off, unthought of, undreamed of when the silver vessel containing Pearl and her outlaw friend swept off into an ethereal November heaven. I watched the plane’s shadow ripple over the desert and drift across the Grand Canyon. We talked and laughed and ate and sang. Stars and the lilac of twilight filled the air, and the Rocky Mountains, shrouded in blue snow, loomed ahead, a lemony slice of new moon hovering above them.
TC: Look, Pearl. A new moon. Let’s make a wish.
PEARL: What are you going to wish?
TC: I wish I could always be as happy as I am at this very moment.
PEARL: Oh, honey, that’s like asking miracles. Wish for something real.
TC: But I believe in miracles.
PEARL: Then all I can say is: don’t ever take up gambling.
The End
