Black Is the Fashion for Dying Read Online Free Page B

steps leading up to a white Mediterranean house with light shining from every window. A party? he wondered, astonished. With Caresse having a six o’clock call? He followed the Filipino houseboy into the house and along the wide hall past shuttered dining-room doors, hearing violins in a Strauss waltz, but no voices. Strange.
    Left alone in the loggia, its huge sliding doors open to Caresse’s shimmering turquoise pool, he lit a fresh cigar. The ball in his stomach was growing bigger. Gas. No, not gas. He started for the bamboo bar in the comer, but on his way he caught sight of a portrait in a silver frame on a glass-topped coffee table. For a moment he stared at the gaunt face looking up at him, the face of a poet, a genius, a prophet, a fanatic, with the mark of the white destroyer stamped on sunken cheeks, corded neck and wild, hollow eyes. He picked up the photograph, saw it was inscribed:
    Let my words rise from my ashes ,
    Caresse, to sing my love!
    Edgar
    The name roused a contemptuous belch from Fabro’s stomach. Edgar Allan Pixley. The trailer-camp bard, living, or dying, rather, on muscatel and cigarette butts and the febrile rush of blood tearing at brain and lungs, but singing his love, too. Stub pencil lines written on the backs of envelopes, on the margins of books, on toilet paper, in the three big accounting books—
    Heels on the marble floor made him put the portrait down, move to the bar. It was Caresse. “I thought you’d be around, sweetie-pie,” she said.
    Her throaty voice was faintly contemptuous and so was her face, milk pale under the jet black hair. He stared in reluctant admiration. She had on some crazy sort of oriental costume, pointed gold slippers, a jewel-embroidered vest and harem pants made of a silky material that looked as though it had been scissored from her turquoise pool. Forty-five, if she was a day. A star for nearly thirty years. Five marriages, a telephone book of lovers, scandals, disasters, triumphs, and she still made carhops of the Mansfields and Monroes.
    â€œI had to come,” he said.
    She moved to the bar, slim and imperious, and reached for a bottle of Bisquit. “Why?”
    â€œCan I buck Benjy?”
    She didn’t answer, intent on pouring the brandy. He watched her uneasily, then said: “You know I don’t want to do this.”
    â€œYou’re not going to.” She shoved the bottle towards him. “Here. Have a slug, and then scram. I’m throwing a party.”
    Instead of taking the bottle, he put one of the legal forms, face up, on the bar. She peered at it over the rim of her inhaler. “‘… not exercising our right of option,’” she read softly, and then met his eyes. “Isn’t it customary to use the word ‘regret’ somewhere, Karl?”
    â€œLook,” he said. “You know this is just temporary. In three months, six months at the most, I’ll give you the straight ten-year contract. Fifty-two weeks a year, no options.”
    â€œWe’ve been over that.”
    â€œI’ll put it in writing, if you want.”
    â€œI almost think you mean it.”
    â€œI do.”
    She smiled indulgently. “Do you honestly believe you can take the company away from Benjy?”
    His face must have betrayed his shock, because she laughed.
    â€œOh, I know what you’ve been up to, lover. Buying stock under half a dozen names.”
    â€œMy God! You mean, everybody knows?”
    â€œJust me.” Her Egyptian-looking eyes studied him reflectively. “You see, I’m deeply interested in your career.” She came around the bar, holding the inhaler in cupped hands, like a priestess. “But you’re counting on something you shouldn’t, sweetie-pie. Irene’s little dowry. She’ll vote it like Papa says.”
    â€œShe wouldn’t dare.”
    â€œâ€˜Honor thy father and mother.’” She halted at the glass-topped